


Hey, Valentine

by Afterlife



Series: His Name for a Love Song [3]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: A Little Jet Never Hurt Nobody, Caution: Feels Inside, Drama, F/M, Not a Gen3 Story, Post-Game, Romance, Sexual Content, The Caravan Arrives from New Vegas, long work
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-27
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-05-29 10:16:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 36
Words: 238,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6370942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Afterlife/pseuds/Afterlife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>He felt like they’d always be trying to find each other again.</em>
</p><p>A Nick and Nora love story.<br/>Third in the series: His Name For a Love Song<br/>Set after Electric Sheep<br/>Note: For some reason, this one is listed as Part Four in the series on my page. It's not. It's three. Only three. : )</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hearts on the Pavement

**Author's Note:**

> Just a note: You'll get more out of this story if you read Be Mine and Electric Sheep first. : ) Enjoy!

Nora woke to the sound of her ears ringing.

There was blood on her tongue and copper down her throat.

Her body felt numb, save for a growing sense of pain in her side. One hand could feel the ruined asphalt under her palm. The other touched leather. She was half-laying on something soft, yet firm, something pliant--like muscle gone limp. 

_What happened?_

Nora struggled to open her eyes. Her body protested the effort, a persistent shake rattling through her nerves. She blinked against the blur in her vision. Once. Twice. She raised her head mere inches from where it rested, a monumental feat that sent fresh quakes down her limbs and ignited the burning pain near her left hip. 

X6-88 lay beneath her, his dark sunglasses askew, blood seeping into a pool from the remains of his throat. 

_Dead._

Memories began to return to her then. She and Nick had been on their way home from Goodneighbor. They’d been there for some kind of celebration. An anniversary? No. A birthday. Her 30th.

He’d surprised her with a trip to the Third Rail. It’d been so long since she’d heard Magnolia sing. Hancock had joined them. MacCready and Cait. Piper showed up sometime in the evening with Preston and Daisy in tow. Kent had given her a Silver Shroud badge for her postman’s bag.

Nick had danced with her. 

A rare gift from a man who was still getting used to being in the public eye. A man who was still learning to accept that he had friends now over acquaintances. A man who had once given her new breath when her lungs had forgotten how to breathe.

Nora coughed against X6-88’s chest and forced air down her throat with shallow heaves.

_What happened next...go back through it...get back to now._

They’d left Goodneighbor the next morning. Spent the night at the Rexford, tied up in one another, like always. They’d started for home, took the long route back. He’d wanted to show her something. A gift? Some sort of gift.

No, a bookstore. The Old Corner Bookstore. 

They’d found it once when they’d first walked the Freedom Trail. Hadn’t had time then to stop in. He took her there after Goodneighbor. They’d found a worn copy of The Secret Garden and a hardcover, intact, of Brave New World. He’d quoted Chandler when she’d lamented over a half burnt softcover of The Long Goodbye and she’d teased him for holding out on her when he said he had a readable copy back at the office. 

They’d spent years together trading stories. Back when she’d been a lawyer and he’d lived another lifetime as a detective, they’d both spent their lunch hours lost between pages. It was a small and sentimental thing they shared; that they both collected. The Commonwealth Book Club, Ellie had said.

He’d remembered the longing look she’d given the shop that first time they’d seen it and had taken her back as a gift only he could give.

The pain in her hip made the joy she remembered feeling as they left the store to head home with their finds bittersweet.

Five steps from the door and he was just standing there; waiting for them. X6-88. 

Nick drew first and put a slug in the courser’s right shoulder, before grabbing hold of her hand in his good one and taking off down the street. 

They ran for an eternity away from the tight killing zone X6 had caught them in. Ran from the narrow corner he’d intended to make their graveyard. The air burned in her lungs as Nick pulled her through tight alleyways and ruined buildings, searching for a place where they could regroup and prepare for battle. The slug wouldn’t slow the courser down for long and with the enhanced Stealth Boy the Institute hitmen always carried, it was never a quick fight if one got the drop on you.

The alleyway they’d been stumbling through opened up into a quiet street, several overturned cars littering the asphalt. High walls on both sides. Only three ways out to watch. It was as good a place as any could be now. It would be where they made their last stand. Nora slid the postman’s bag from her shoulders, retrieving her pistol and a pocketknife. Another gift she’d been given on her journeys, this one from a man well versed in murder that she’d hesitated to kill the first time she met him. She’d thanked him for the knife properly when she’d chanced upon him a second time, by slicing it through his gut.

It was a good knife, when she needed one.

Nick’s 10mm was already in hand. Two pistols and a pigsticker between them. Their odds weren’t good. He’d pressed his good palm to her cheek. Brushed her lips with his own in an apology, as if it might be the last time he’d ever kiss her, and together, they waited.

Things got blurry after that. The sound of a puddle being disturbed, Nick’s gun firing, X6-88 rushing their position and heading straight for Nora. She’d unloaded her clip and still he kept coming. The Courser raised his rifle. She’d heard five shots, but had only taken two. Nick had gotten between them, had shoved his pistol under the other synth’s ribs and fired in rapid succession. X6 caught Nick by the remains of his throat, had lifted him off his feet even as his own chest was bleeding out and tossed him into the upturned end of a Corvega. Nora had leapt on him before he’d finished the throw, but she’d heard him fire his rifle one last time and the world went red.

Her clever little knife found its mark at the courser’s throat and she stabbed up and into the flesh of his jaw, pulling the blade across with a roar even as his fingers tore at the flesh of her arms, his elbow jabbing sharply into the wound at her hip, causing her vision to fill with dancing stars. They’d fallen then...and rolled. The scrape of broken asphalt cutting through her jeans, drawing blood in thick scrapes across her knees, back and forearm.

He’d died without words beneath her; the sick bubbling sound from his throat his only eulogy. 

And then she’d blacked out.

_But for how long?_

The sun was still up, but the shadows it cast were long. Dusk would fall in an hour or two, she was fairly sure of it. She and Nick needed to get somewhere safe and soon, or…

_Nick._

Nausea bloomed fresh in her belly, her husband’s name echoing through her skull. Nick. _Something had happened to Nick._

Get up.

_Get up._

She needed to get up. She needed to find him. She needed...

“ _Ugh_ ,” Nora whimpered through clenched teeth as she forced her arms to take her weight and her torso lifted with a soft rain of gravel. “...Nick?”

The pain in her side was really starting to wake now.

She pressed the palm of her right hand to the red stain still spreading across the white of her t-shirt and grunted. He’d caught her straight through above the left hip and she’d laid there long enough that the blood had soaked through both jeans and cotton top till they were slick and damp and sticking to her skin.

“Nick?” She tried again, unsure of the volume in her voice. It sounded in her head like she was shouting, but with the rawness in her throat, it might have been little more than a whisper.

And then she heard it. A slight brush of metal against the pavement.

“Oh...that’s a- _ha_ \--that’s a lotta coolant.”

The world stopped when her eyes finally came upon him. He was crumpled against the underside of the upturned Corvega, his fedora low over his forehead. His bad arm lay useless and limp, the trench coat torn open high on his arm where sparks occasionally hissed and popped free from. He’d taken a hit to the gut. _Several_ hits in succession by the looks of it. His good white shirt was burned at the edges of the gaping hole across his belly, coolant pouring out from loose tubing painting it black.

It was near silent as Nora half-stumbled, half-crawled to him, her palm pressed hard against her own wounds and holding herself together just long enough to make it to the space between his splayed legs. Her hands shook when she reached for him, her bloodied palms catching both sides of his jaw as she gently lifted his chin until she could see him. The lights of his eyes flickered when they met hers. Nick smiled.

“Was hoping I’d get a chance to see you again, Doll,” he rasped out, another pump of coolant splashing against his good hand. “Got a little worried there. Didn’t seem like you’d be getting back up.”

Nora laughed, even as she felt the warm sting of tears down her cheeks. She pressed her lips to his, brows furrowed and praying to gods she didn’t know if she even believed in for their aide.

“Suppose there are worse ways to go,” he murmured. “Seems to have missed my heart.”

“Don’t,” she choked, her forehead pressed to his now, as if she could will him back into being whole again. “We’re getting out of here. _Together_.”

“Might want to give me another minute then,” he gestured weakly with a nod of his head towards the hole in his midsection. “I don’t think I’m fit for a walk in the park just now.”

“Let me see,” she eased his hand out of the wound, careful not to entangle it further into the torn tubes and sparking wires. A large, once white tube near his metal spine was severed and dumping coolant with his every breath. “Oh, God…Nick...”

“Just leave it,” he pleaded.

“No!” Her voice was rough and desperate. “We just...just need to stop the flow for now.”

Her eyes searched him for a moment, before zeroing in on his tie.

“Nora…”

She ignored him as he called her, instead focusing on keeping her bloody hands steady as she frantically unknotted the silk. Without hesitation, she slipped the length of it free and shoved her hands into his body, trying not to think about what she was doing and who she was doing it for. She worked it around the tubing, tying it off into a tight tourniquet until the coolant no longer poured out. Her hands were still buried and working under his steel ribs when he tried her name again.

“Nora, listen to me…”

“There, see? Don't know why I ever bothered with law school,” her laugh was marred by tears and the hitch of pain her movements cost her. “Now we get you on your feet.”

“Nora, please.”

“Here we go,” she scooted up as close as she could manage in their awkward positions and slid her arms under his. “On three! One, two...oof!”

She strained against his weight, feeling something in her side tear. She’d raised him the barest of centimeters. 

“Comon’,” she urged her body. “We can do this!”

Her breath came in heavy puffs now. She clenched her teeth and tried a second time, the tears hot and flowing freely down her cheeks as the blood matched pace out her side. She felt dizzy.

Her breath gave out. She fell to her knees between his legs, her head pressed against his chest in defeat.

“ _Goddamn it_ ,” she cried. “Why are you so damned heavy!”

“Nora, stop,” he caressed her face, leaving smudges of black coolant against her pale skin. He smoothed her unruly dark hair behind an ear, just as he always did. “Listen to me now.”

“No,” she whimpered, shaking her head weakly against his shoulder. “I don’t want to hear it.”

“You can’t carry me and I’m not walking anywhere like this,” he began, his voice soft, but steady. “You’re bleeding out. You need to get somewhere safe.”

“I won’t leave without you,” she refused to look at him.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he pressed a kiss to her crown. “But you need to find help. Get those wounds patched up. You don’t have to worry about me now, I’ll...I’ll always be here when you come back.”

“ _No!_ ” She shouted, fists clenching into the material of his trench coat. “We leave together or not at all!”

“Nora…”

“Please, Nick, just let me think a moment,” she was sobbing now as he held her. “Just let me _think_ …”

Her mind was racing. She’d survived too much for it to come to this. She’d burnt down kingdoms and built new ones, tackled super mutants and led armies; had survived the death of one loving husband already and torn apart his murderer with her bare hands. She’d killed her own son to secure a future for the rest of the world, had torched the remnants of her old life and found the strength to keep going. She’d survived hell with this man always at her back. Had turned to find him offering her a place in his world by his side and she’d befriended him and laughed with him and loved him all the more for it. They were a pair, Nick and her, a matched set. Where his heart ended, hers began; it was just the way it was between them. They’d fought literal wars for one another. She wasn’t about to leave him here to die now. Not like this.

No. She could save this man. She could save this man if she really tried. She’d been General of the damned Minutemen once, for God’s sake, she could handle a little emergency like...

Nora’s eyes widened. 

She knew what to do.

“Start up your sleep protocols,” she said suddenly.

“Nora, what..?” He wondered at her new found resolve.

“You told me once that your sleep protocols shut down any unnecessary systems while it’s running,” she explained in hurried excitement. “It’s no secret that I’m not great with the science stuff, but even I can tell your body is struggling to keep everything running right now just by the way your eyes keep flickering. If you run your sleep cycle, it might help your system conserve power.”

“That’s one a hell of a long shot,” he frowned.

“Just do this for me, Nick,” she pleaded, hand pressed to the tattered skin of his cheek. “While there’s still something left for us to bank on...please.”

“I-I can try,” he watched her carefully now. She crawled to the place they’d hunkered down when this all started, coming back soon after with the remains of her postman’s bag. “What are you going to do?”

“Something stupid,” she let out a shaky laugh, fumbling through her bag.

“I can start the sleep protocol and it should help with the power conservation,” he finally admitted as she retrieved a fat canvas roll tied with leather string from beneath her other treasures. “But it’ll shut down my speech center.”

He looked at her long and hard then. His eyes flickered.

“You’ll be going it alone from here on out.”

“I’ll still have you with me,” she smiled at him, her skin pale enough from the blood loss that it was beginning to take on a bluish tint. Her freckles shone like dark stars. “Just means enduring a few hours without your voice getting me randy. You can make it up to me later.”

“If we get through this,” he reached for her and her hand rose, meeting his in the middle. “I’ll do just that.”

She squeezed his hand in reassurance.

“Hey Valentine,” she whispered.

“N-need something?” He smiled at her.

“Dream a good dream for me, will you?”

“I’ll try,” his chuckle became a wheeze. “Any requests?”

“One where we make it back home together.”

His thumb brushed over her knuckles. 

“We’ll make it a date,” he promised. “Seven still a good time for you?”

His eyes flickered then, before the lights dimmed to a dull glow. His breathing was much shallower now than it had been, and his coolant system pumped at half the rate; but he was alive.

“I’ll be there with bells on,” she sucked in a breath to keep new tears from spilling forth. She couldn’t cry now. She had work to do.

Nora acted quickly. Dusk would be falling and she wouldn’t be able to defend them in the dark. Unrolling the thick canvas bundle, she took mental stock of its contents. Carefully prepared doses of chems lay neatly in a line, boxes and syringes arranged and labeled in a quick spidery scrawl. At the end of the canvas roll: one thick black marker.

Hancock had given her the emergency kit as a farewell gift years ago, back when he’d finally returned to home to Goodneighbor for the last time and she’d made the decision to settle in the new Diamond City. The Mayor and the General had made one hell of a team when the Commonwealth had still been under the shadow of the Institute. Though he ribbed her about keeping him from his mayoral duties for too long, he’d asked her up to his office before she headed back out again, pressing the emergency kit into her hands and making her promise to keep it in her postal bag at all times. Just in case; because he wouldn’t be there to watch her back. 

She’d teased him about giving a clean girl like her drugs at first, but John had been so serious, had pleaded with her to do this for him in earnest, she’d stopped laughing. He needed to know she’d be all right without him at her side if things turned sideways from then on. He needed to know she’d _survive_.

John was many things, but first and foremost, a good man. 

And a brilliant chemist.

She could hear him clearly in her head now, could see his black eyes boring into hers as he walked her through the chems.

She popped the cap on the first small vial and dropped two white tablets spotted with pink crystals into one hand.

_“First, two mentats,” he’d explained. “To keep you sharp. If shit goes down, you gotta keep your head on.”_

They tasted something like raspberry chalk and metal in her dry mouth, but Nora chewed until they were gone. She felt the fog suddenly lift, like a clean wind had swept out the clutter in her brain. The pain in her side hit her in full suddenly.

_“If you’re bleeding, the mentats will let you know,” he’d said solemnly. “It’s gonna hurt like hell, but you can’t douse that fire till you stop the bleeding.”_

Nora fingered the first of two stimpak syringes.

_“You shove one of these above the wound…”_

She aimed the needle just under her ribs. Deep breath.

_“...and put the other one in just below it.”_

She gasped and tossed the first empty syringe. The second one she put deep into the flesh above her hipbone.

_“Never more than two, or they’ll be cutting you open again to get the bullets back. Just enough to keep from bleeding out.”_

Nora’s breath was still labored, her body shaking uncontrollably. She could feel the wound trying to close and the pain as flesh knit back together was intense.

_“You’re gonna wanna curl up and die right about then,” he assured her, holding up a long thin syringe filled with deep blue liquid. “You take a deep breathe and fish this bad boy out. Doesn’t matter where you stick it, you ain’t gonna feel shit once it’s in.”_

She palmed the injector to get a better grip and plunged it right below her belly button. The length of the needle sliding into the muscle there made her nauseous, and she forced herself to ease the depressor down slowly so as not to snap it in two. Relief flooded through her almost immediately. She was glad she’d taken the mentats. By the way her limbs reacted, she had no doubt she’d be swimming in her skull without them right now.

Her breathing evened out as the pain lost its vice grip on her body. Jesus, she wanted to lay down. 

_“Before you go any further, you take this,” Hancock had held up the marker then, the label long gone. “You put it to skin and make sure the whole fucking world knows what you’re on. If shit’s bad enough you need anything more, then it’s bad enough you might need help coming back down.”_

Nora cracked the cap on the marker and carefully wrote what she’d taken on the outside of her left arm. When she’d finished, she flipped her palm over and continued on her wrist, marking black up to her elbow with what she was about to take. 

She capped the marker, before thinking better of it and uncapping it one more time. She swapped hands, slowing her progress as she tried to form letters on the inside of her right arm with her left hand. The writing was sloppy, but it was legible.

_Save Nick_

Tossing the marker away, she pulled out the next vial, dumping the small collection of pills into her mouth. It took more effort to swallow these than the mentats and she felt them travel uncomfortably all the way down.

_“Three doses of Buffout,” John held up the clear vial in front of her, the pills inside a sickly green. “It’ll get you back on your feet and let you carry whatever crap you need to. It’s gonna make your chest feel like it’s exploding, but I ain’t giving you more than what you can handle. Trust me to take care of you on this.”_

It was a damn good thing she trusted John. The adrenalin kick from the Buffout superseded the warm comfort brought on by the Med-X. Every nerve in her body felt like it was jumping and her heart began to race as if she’d just finished a marathon. He wasn’t kidding about the effects. Nora felt like her chest would soon burst.

But she felt strong. Strong enough to stand. 

Jerking forward as she found her feet again, Nora stumbled a few steps and rose to her full height, adjusting to the pounding drumbeat in her chest as her sneakers crunched over dirt and pavement. She walked two short laps around her postman’s bag, took another deep breath for good measure, and reached for the last injector.

It was fat and full and big enough that her slender fingers couldn’t wrap all the way around it. It was easy to hold onto, however, with a thick leather strap designed to keep it in the user’s palm, and the plunger was designed to give little resistance against her thumb. She tightened the strap so that the injector was tied firmly to her palm, needle angled down and ready.

_“Now this shit ain’t to be used, but for real emergencies,” he held the final injector up so she could see the even demarcations along one side. “You don’t use this when you need to fight something. You use this to make sure you get the fuck outta there in one piece.”_

He flipped the injector over so that it was in his palm now, the heavy needle hovering just over his thigh.

_“Don’t aim for your arm, it’s too small a target. Shove it in your leg and go.”_

He turned the injector back towards her, letting her take hold of it.

_“Psycho. My own special blend,” he explained with a hint of pride. “The high don’t last long, but it’s stronger than the regular juice. This shit will make sure you get to where you need to go, when you need to go there fast. There’s five hits in this thing and you, you don’t take more than four, you feel me?”_

She’d raised a brow at that.

_“You ain’t a big woman, Sister,” he grinned wryly at her. “And you don’t sling anything ‘cept for some goddamned nicotine. You never do more than four of these, understand? Four will leave you in some real shit, but five? Five could kill ya.”_

Five could kill ya.

And yet he’d given her a fifth dose. Because John knew her better than anyone when she was in battle. Because she’d always pushed herself beyond limitations when she should have just died. Because he knew if things were bad enough, she’d damn the consequences and take the fifth hit anyway.

John was a good man.

_“Don’t die out there without me, Sunshine,” he’d held his hand over hers when the canvas pack had been rolled back up and he’d held it out for her. “This world could stand a few more people like you. So, stick around.”_

She hoped she wouldn’t disappoint him.

Nora held her breath one last time and plunged the thick syringe into the meat of her thigh. Her thumb hit the plunger.

_One._

And she was ready to take on the whole fucking world.

Hancock’s blend hit her hard and fast. He hadn’t been exaggerating the effects, but she knew they wouldn’t last long.

Four minutes had passed since she’d started dosing herself with the contents of John’s emergency kit. Now, it was a race against the clock. Nora knew she could do this. She’d outrun the bombs once. She could do it a second time.

Turning back to Nick, she checked his breathing once more before reaching for him. Gently, she maneuvered him onto her back, roping her arms under his thighs and leaning far forward until his arms rested comfortably over her shoulders and his chest rested along her spine. He wasn’t quite a full head taller than her, but the difference was enough that she’d still struggle under his size. 

Another breath and she launched to her feet. Between the Buffout and John’s Psycho, Nick felt like he weighed little more than a sack of tatos. If they survived this, she owed Hancock a lifetime worth of debts.

It was too far to go back to Goodneighbor now, much as she wanted to. X6 had chased them a good distance from the Old Corner Bookstore and left them stranded on the far side of the free city; its high walls too tall to breach from the back and its entrance too far to reach for the amount of Psycho left in her hand.

There was only one place left to go now. She only hoped she could run the distance.

Taking off into a jog, Nora headed straight for HQ. She knew she could count on Curie and Carrington to be there and the new additions they’d gained from her time in the Institute were her best bet for saving Nick.

The chems fueled her body and her desperation kept her feet landing one in front of the other. Somewhere along the way, her jog broke into a run. Absently, Nora wondered at how easy her body moved now; at how little of her injuries the chems let her feel. 

Her chest tightened.

If Nick died and she survived this, she wondered how much it would take for her to never feel anything ever again.


	2. Counting Towards the Finish Line

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nora races against the clock to HQ

She ran.

The weight of the remaining Psycho in her hand worlds heavier than the synthetic, broken body of her husband on her back. 

_One dose left._

She was running out of time. Nora recounted the hits in her mind once more, but the number never changed. She thought back on each use, hoping she’d miscounted.

The first gave her the strength to start their journey. The needle had hurt like a motherfucker with the first plunge, but the rush of energy and aggression left her amped and ready to run. She’d lifted Nick without a hint of trouble and had found her adrenaline cap lacking. Her legs pumped at an obscene rate and Nora was certain she’d broken several olympic records in the process.

The second dose had gotten her back on her feet when the effect of the first hit fled her system without warning. She’d crumpled to her knees under Nick’s sudden increase in weight while in the same motion jabbing the syringe into her thigh for the next hit. That one sent tremors down her limbs, even as it reignited her ability to keep going.

The third had helped her through a tough spot involving a sightless corner and an old raider’s turret that’d still been running hot. She felt the bullets prick at the skin of her leg, shredding the jeans there and leaving more bleeding holes in their wake. The Med-X from earlier drowned out any pain and the new hit of Psycho kept her pace from breaking, but the upswing in her heart rate from the Buffout was a tickle compared to what she felt with the third hit.

The fourth she’d taken when the third’s time was up. She’d been counting the seconds this time around and had the plunger in her leg before her knees had time to quake. She imagined this was what dying felt like when you struggled against taking that last breath. She’d been suddenly ravenous for a cigarette; the pleasant wash of a high the nicotine always gave her a far cry from the ride she was barreling down now. She imagined taking that initial drag and the ten second interval before the tingling would start spreading through her nerves, followed by the calming buzz that would filter in afterwards. It was enough of a distraction from the fire currently burning through her veins to get them to the steps of the Old North Church. 

She’d cleared the first step when the dose ran out. Struggled up the second as she felt the worrying quiver run down her legs. Hit the third as Nick’s full weight came upon her once more. Her knees buckled on the fourth and sent them hard to the ground before she could even contemplate taking the fifth.

She wanted to laugh as the tears began to well up behind her eyes. Fucking figured.

The Buffout in her system gave her the strength to keep herself propped up on hands and knees beneath her husband’s battered body, but it wasn’t enough to get her the rest of the way. Nora contemplated her choices. She could hold out here until the Buffout’s high left her flat out on the steps, praying one of the agents might happen to come by and find them before that unfortunate fate came to pass. Or she could take the last hit of John’s Psycho and play the numbers.

She trusted Hancock enough to know he’d never lie to her about the odds. It was down to a lawyer’s gamble now. The jury was stacked against her. Would she plead out and accept the loss or would she place her fate at the feet of the Judge in the hope that justice wouldn’t sentence her to a death penalty.

There wasn’t ever a choice in her mind. She’d never taken the easy way out in the courtroom, not when a life was at stake and she still had cards to play in her hand.

She plunged the needle into the growing blood stain at her thigh.

“Forgive me for this,” she whispered to the evening breeze.

Her thumb depressed the plunger.

And as her body screamed at the intrusion of the liquid coursing through her system, tearing with razor blades at the underside of her skin, Nora found her feet one last time. She spit on the fifth step, leaving a small wet patch of red upon it in defiance, before scaling the others with ease.

The blood was thick in her mouth and raging through her ears as she tore her way toward the crude chalk drawing of a lantern that marked her path. Things got fuzzy after that. She didn’t remember the long stairway to the crypt under her feet, didn’t remember the sloshing of the water that seeped into her canvas shoes as she kicked past skeletons and the rotting remains of feral ghouls that littered the tunnel; she didn’t remember spinning the big bronze dial, nor the short pathway from there that took her into HQ.

What she would remember was the bewildered look of the agents as she burst finally into the control room a moment before all hell broke loose.

Three steps in. Then four. Then _six._

She collapsed before she reached the war table. Her body had finally given out.

She’d reached the finish line.

Whatever happened now, she’d played her hand. The final arguments were over; court was in recess. Their lives were in the minds of the jury now.

Nora prayed that she hadn’t lost in her gamble.

She prayed that just this once, justice might be merciful.

She prayed until her body started convulsing and the fire in her veins was snuffed out by the darkness that consumed her.

The silence in HQ exploded as the woman they’d known as Charmer hit the floor.

“Carrington!” Desdemona barked, flicking the remains of her cigarette to the side, before shouting emergency orders to the agents still motionless and waiting for her direction. She made a beeline for Charmer then, but Curie got there first.

“Oh, non, non,” she muttered, her slender fingers checking Nora’s blood-slick wrist for a pulse. “What happened to you…”

“Glory!” Carrington yelled. “Get him off of her!”

“On it!” The dark-skinned synth was at the doctor’s side in an instant, carefully sliding Nick’s good arm over her shoulders and lifting him with ease. Coolant dripped in thick, dark plops onto the ground from his wound; the entire back of Nora’s white t-shirt now stained an inky black.

“Jesus,” Deacon hissed, leaping into the fray. “Get him into Pam’s room!”

“Tom!” Desdemona rounded on the man in question. “Take Wallace and Doctor Li. See to the Detective!”

“Y-yes, ma’am!” Tinker Tom shot to his feet, shoveling an assortment of gadgets into an old comic box and racing across HQ.

“Deacon, you too,” Desdemona nodded in the direction they’d taken Nick, as Carrington and Curie began the task of turning Nora onto her back.

“Dez...” his protest died off as quickly as it started. They’d managed to get Charmer’s body to turn, the black coolant soaked into her t-shirt replaced by dark red blooms across her front. 

Carrington and Curie whispered medical nonsense to one another as they assessed her many wounds. She looked so small nestled between their knees, her skin pale and body shaking as her eyes rolled back in her head. Black writing covered her arms and while Curie took note of the chapter she’d scrawled on her left arm, Deacon’s eyes fixed on the shaky message tattooing her right.

_Save Nick_

“Get that light over here!” Carrington shouted suddenly at one of the young medical recruits.

_Jesus, there was so much blood._

“Deacon,” he felt her hand gently squeeze his shoulder before he noticed she was standing in front of him. He could still see Charmer’s arm and the black words she’d carved there over Dez’s shoulder. 

“I need you to look at me.”

He was shaking now, he knew. There was no lie to tell that could hide that truth from her. Deacon met her gaze from behind the shield of his sunglasses.

“We’ve got two battlefronts to fight right now and I can’t command them both,” her tone was soft but edged with steel. “I’ve got Charmer, but you have another friend in there now that needs someone familiar nearby and I need someone that can lead that team’s operation. Can I count on you, Agent?”

“Y-you know me, boss,” he finally managed to breathe out. “Always ready, willing, and able.”

“She’s in good hands with me,” Desdemona walked him the first few steps away from the woman on the floor he’d once been partnered with. The only Agent that he’d ever allowed to partner with him. “I won’t let her go dark without a fight.”

Deacon nodded, not trusting his voice just then, and forced his feet to keep walking. He never noticed when Desdemona didn’t continue to follow.

“Dez,” Carrington called for her and the leader of the Railroad returned to Charmer’s side, her stoic mask back in place. 

“Let’s hear it,” she ordered, preparing for the worst. Curie was frantically hooking up an IV drip, several vials of medicine and syringes already expended at her side.

“We don’t have all the supplies to treat her here,” he began, his normally cool exterior cracking with his voice. “Whatever happened out there, she pumped herself full of a variety of chems to reach us and it may be more than we can handle.”

“What do you need?”

“We can treat the wounds and start flushing her system. I have some sedatives to help, but with the all the opiates she’s injected..,” Carrington sighed and ran a shaky hand through his hair. “We need something like Naloxone.”

As Carrington continued to give her his assessment, Desdemona took note of the writing covering Charmer’s slender arms. She knelt beside Curie as she worked, gingerly taking hold of Charmer’s wrist and cataloguing the list there.

_Mentats x 2_  
_Stimpak x 2_  
_Med-X x 1_  
_Buffout x 3_  
_Psycho - Sorry, John_

“Who’s John?” Desdemona snarled, a sharp contrast to the gentle way she laid the woman’s hand back against the floor.

“She may mean Monsieur Hancock,” Curie glanced at her, before working another IV lead into a vein. “Zey are good friends, yes?”

“Drummer Boy!” Desdemona barked and the man appeared quickly from his corner. “You’re on deck! Get your ass to Goodneighbor and find the Mayor. Let him know what’s going on. Carrington, give him a list of the supplies we need.”

The two men sprang into action, Carrington quickly scrawling on the back of a discarded folder his requests.

“And bring Doctor Amari back with you,” Desdemona added as Drummer Boy tucked Carrington’s list in his coat pocket. “For all the geniuses in that room right now, she knows Nick Valentine best. I want her here. Tell her it’s an emergency.”

“On my way!” The man called as he ran towards the back exit. There was no one in the Railroad as fast in a dead run as Drummer Boy and she prayed he would cover the distance to the free city in record time. 

“Non! Non!” Curie’s sudden cry turned Desdemona’s attention back to the situation at hand. 

“She’s going into cardiac arrest!” Carrington yelled and hurriedly searched through the glass vials on his side of Charmer’s body. 

“Make room!” Desdemona shoved Curie closer to Charmer’s head, positioning her arms over the downed Agent’s heart. “Tell me when, Curie!”

The short haired synth nodded in understanding and directed Desdemona’s actions as they began CPR. The leader of the Railroad watched as Curie’s lips descended to Charmer’s, fingers held firmly on her chin to keep her mouth in position as one woman breathed for the other. On Curie’s mark, Desdemona began the chest compressions, counting seconds out loud with each sharp press of her palms against Charmer’s sternum. Beneath her hands, she felt bone give way. One or more of the woman’s ribs had cracked.

They repeated the action for an eternity while Carrington shot another vial into the IV. Curie managed to push one more breath into Charmer’s lungs and Desdemona prepared for another round of compressions, when the cough they’d been waiting on shook her former Agent’s body and her trembling began anew. 

“Blankets!” Carrington howled. 

“She’s going into shock,” Curie explained more calmly. 

“Come on, Charmer,” Desdemona murmured as they spread the blankets over her the medical recruits delivered. “Don’t give up on us yet.”

“Mom?”

Desdemona turned to find her son nervously staring back at her through the chaos. He looked younger than twelve just then. Younger than the ageless ten he would always be. 

“Is Aunt Nora going to be ok?” He took cautious steps around the length of Charmer’s body, coming to rest by her feet. 

“We’re doing everything we can, Michael,” she tried reassuring him, before extending a hand and leading him to sit. “You know what would help her most right now? If someone could hold her feet in their lap.”

“I can do that,” he smiled, and though the fear was still present, she could tell he was relieved to be helping.

Desdemona handed him a small tattered cushion and watched as he placed it neatly in his lap before, together, they lifted Charmer’s feet to rest upon it. His tiny hands held on to them by her dirty shoelaces and the expression he wore was one of determination. His hair was now the same faded shade of red that Desdemona’s was, but his eyes; his eyes would always be the same blue as Charmer’s.

Desdemona had lost Agents before and she didn’t doubt she’d lose Agents again, the new wave of peace flooding the Commonwealth be damned. She’d seen the cruelty this world had to offer first hand when the Institute had existed and a Courser had taken the wife and daughter she’d once known. All because her wife had once had numbers in place of a name. 

Desdemona had lived only for the Railroad after that and her passion for saving synths and destroying the Commonwealth’s greatest enemy had known no bounds. People thought her methods sterile and her attitude cold, but after years of bloodying her hands with the bodies of the Agents she threw against the Institute, she’d learned that every cause came at a high cost. Those that chose to lead didn’t have the luxury of being soft.

She’d felt the blood in her own veins slowly turning to ice as safe houses went dark and the Switchboard fell. She’d known their end was coming, sooner than later.

And then, like an avenging angel, the woman out of time had fallen into her care. She’d tracked down the Railroad with that synth detective always one step behind her and the pair had given the organization exactly what they’d needed to turn the tides of war. She knew a little of the hell that Charmer...no, Nora...had been through. She’d known, in the end, who Father really was.

She’d been standing right there, beside Nora, on that teleporter, when the dark-haired synth-child had called her mom. 

For all that the Institute had put her through and all the Railroad had asked of her, Desdemona wouldn’t have blamed her for leaving him behind. Instead, she placed his hand in Tom’s and whispered one final plea in Desdemona’s ear, from one mother who’d lost a child to another.

“Let my son stay dead. Give this kid a life to call his own.”

Dez had taken him to see Amari, herself, and though the good doctor was reluctant at first, she understood this was not an act of misplaced grief. Nora had long since mourned the death of her son, had long since come to terms with the terrible man he’d become in her absence and she didn’t want him dictating the life of anyone anymore, especially not that of a child.

When all was said and done, Desdemona had named him Michael. For the angel his Aunt was and for the avenger both his mothers had once had to be.

Both Desdemona and the Railroad owed the woman caught somewhere between life and death on the floor of HQ a debt that could never be repaid. Whatever had done this to Nora and to Nick, whoever it was that had destroyed the happiness they’d found, Desdemona would be sure they paid for it, one way or another.

She reached beneath the edge of the blanket and took hold of Nora’s hand as Curie and Carrington got her stabilized, willing her strength would hold. Charmer was a fighter and Desdemona would move heaven and earth now to help her fight her way back to them.

They’d focus on winning this battle for now and in the morning, when things were settled, she’d start planning the next one. This time she’d have Nora’s back. If there was one thing Desdemona knew, it was how to be an avenger.

Until then, she’d stay beside her friend and play the angel.


	3. I Promise You, She Knows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Save Nick_
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> “We’re trying, sweetheart,” he sighed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is the shortest of the bunch.

In the midst of his current brand of chaos, one of the medical recruits had snuck into P.A.M’s room to inform Deacon that Charmer had been stabilized for now. She wasn’t out of the woods yet, not by a long shot, but she’d been good enough that they were in the process of moving her into the new lab across HQ, where the gun range had once existed.

Deacon breathed a tiny bit easier at the news. 

Now they just had to figure out how to fulfill that request she’d written in black marker on her forearm.

_Save Nick_

“We’re trying, sweetheart,” he sighed, tossing his black pompadour wig into a corner. “All right, kids, what have you got for me? Mister Valentine here’s not looking too good.”

The three engineers looked at him from their huddled positions around Nick’s beaten frame. 

“It...it’s not good,” Wallace began for the group.

“Nah, man,” Tom smacked the balding man’s arm in irritation. “You can’t just lead in with the bad news! You’ve gotta ease him into this.”

“We can’t fix him,” Doctor Li stated bluntly. 

“Yeah, that’s not really gonna work out for me,” Deacon crossed his arms and prepared for a fight.

“Look, Dee, it’s like this,” Tom pulled down one of his many magnifiers and pointed to the cavity that consumed most of Nick’s midsection. “Whatever happened out there, Charmer’s main man took at least a couple of hits from an Institute rifle dead on. His systems below the chest cage are busted and what’s not torn up is melted beyond repair.”

“So what?” Deacon shrugged, inching closer to the detective laid out on the card tables. “We hunt down a couple of fresh Gen 2’s and borrow some parts.”

“No, no...that’s wrong, I mean, it’s not that simple,” Wallace wiped at his brow with the remains of a handkerchief. “Those parts won’t match. The system’s are too outdated…”

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Doctor Li admitted picking up the conversation and gesturing at Nick’s prone form. “We know he was some kind of prototype between generations, a bridging point between the Gen 2’s and the Gen 3’s, but the technology here...it’s very similar to tech that was used by the Institute, some of it is the same technology we used at the Institute, but it’s not close enough we can mix and match. His sensor net alone is, well, honestly, it’s a work of art with this level of technology.”

Deacon frowned, but before he could say anything, Tom gestured him towards the data console. 

“Now, now, don’t be giving your old friend, Tom that look just yet,” he crowed cheerfully. “It’s not all doom and gloom. Valentine, here, put himself into some kind of auxiliary power mode.”

Tom brought up a scrolling wall of code that Deacon was hard pressed to make heads or tails of.

“Which means, what...exactly?” 

“Which means, this dude bought us some time to work with,” Tom looked at Deacon as if he’d grown another head. “By cutting off the systems he didn’t need, he managed to preserve his major life support network. That shit’s what keeps his memory drives from failing. So long as his memory drives stay solid, there’s a chance we can keep what’s him, uh, him…regardless of the body.”

“Whoa,” Deacon raised his hands. “What are we talking here? Moving him into a Gen 3? Cause, I have bad news for you: We’re fresh out.”

“Yeah, that’s a problem, too,” Tom nodded. “But, we’ve got a sliiightly bigger hitch in the plan than that.”

“The complexity of his neuronet is nothing like we’ve ever seen before,” Doctor Li explained. “It’s not based on any design for the Gen 2’s or the Gen 3’s--it’s custom work. Even if there was an available body to transfer him to, there’s no guarantee we could make it work.”

“A-also, there’s the other thing,” Wallace came over to the data terminal now, turning to Tom. “We should...we should probably tell him now about the other thing, right?”

“I was getting to it, man, don’t fret,” Tom reassured him. “So, then there’s this other thing.”

Tom scrolled through the wall of code before stopping at a line and pointing. It was all Greek at this point for Deacon and he just nodded along.

“While we were running the diagnostics on his brain matter, we ran into a lock.”

“What kind of lock?”

“Yeah, about that. We don’t know. This shit ain’t standard Institute hardware and whatever this is, Nick currently doesn’t have enough internal power to let us get in there to figure it out.”

“The Institute regularly used mnemonic locks to keep synth memories from being tampered with,” Doctor Li explained. “The detective had a set of those that we’ve already bypassed, but this one was set deeper in the encoding of his memory drives. It’s much older.”

“Would Amari know?” Deacon asked, trying to make sense of it all. “Drummer’s already been sent out to escort her to HQ.”

“It’s possible if she’s familiar with his system,” Doctor Li offered in return. “But the notes we do have from her on Valentine don’t mention anything deeper than the standard mnemonic locks we’re all used to.”

“I haven’t even gotten to the big mystery yet,” Tom’s eyes were wide in a combination of excitement and fear.

“Well, wow me then.”

“Whatever’s going on with this lock in the system? We do know what it’s doing, even if we can’t access the information yet.”

Deacon could tell he was waiting for a reaction before the big reveal. He put on his best look of surprise and awe.

“Wow, that is _something_ ,” he grinned. “So, what’s it doing?”

“Broadcasting.”

Deacon’s face fell.

“What do you mean it’s broadcasting?”

“That’s just it, man!” Tom was truly excited now, slapping Deacon’s shoulder in his enthusiasm. “We don’t know!”

Deacon pinched the bridge of his nose. Brilliant as they may be, the Railroad Science Team was giving him a headache.

“What we do know,” Doctor Li stepped in before Deacon could ask. “Is that this lock is somehow protecting the broadcast signal. If we can help provide power to Mister Valentine’s cells, we may be able to crack the lock open and figure out what sort of data it’s transmitting.”

“I don’t know about you,” Deacon frowned. “But I’m not _real_ fond of people talking about cracking open my close personal friends. Especially when we’re supposed to be saving them.”

“T-there is a risk involved,” Wallace spoke earnestly. “We’re...we’re not denying that. But...but there’s also a lot we don’t know about Mister Valentine’s systems...and the more we know about him and what this lock is guarding, the better chance we have of helping him out...so there.”

“Either way,” Doctor Li added. “We have to do something about his power supply. He bought us more time, but not enough to debate a course of action for long.”

“Look, D, we can hook him up through P.A.M,” Tom was bargaining now. “She can double as a power buffer and a firewall, so we minimize the risk. She’ll be able to regulate the power flow through her systems and give us better access to his in the process. Whatever’s behind that lock, it might be the key we need to fix this mess.”

“That _mess_ is married to my old partner,” Deacon’s facade dropped long enough in the face of their science talk to let some of his real anger slip through.

His outburst had one blessing attached to it: The trio had finally gone silent. 

Deacon sighed. Time to start again.

“Okay, so let me get this straight,” he extended the olive branch carefully and in small sentences. “We hook up Nick to Pam. Pam helps feed his power cells which fuel his memory drives, which we don’t want to lose. Am I getting it so far?”

“In a roundabout way, y-yes,” Wallace nodded.

“Close enough. Now, somewhere in Nick’s system there’s a lock in the code and that lock is transmitting information to...somewhere,” Deacon paced the length of the room slowly. “While Pam’s connected, we use her system to crack his and maaaybe then that might help us get back to saving his life.”

“Exactly,” Tom patted his back. “See? This shit ain’t complicated.”

“Right,” Deacon rubbed a tired hand over his face. He kind of hoped Doc Carrington still had that private stash of bourbon hidden under his alcove. “So, here’s a question. If we connect him to Pam and power him up, can I talk to him?”

“Y-you want to talk to him?”

“Look, we’re about to go poking around in the man’s head, and we have no idea what that’s gonna do,” Deacon reasoned with the team. “His wife’s currently out of commission and I’d like a little confirmation from one of the involved parties before we move ahead on this.”

“We can bring him back online so he can speak,” Doctor Li acknowledged. “But it means bringing all of him back online. Including his pain sensors.”

Her expression softened.

“I just want you to be prepared. He may not be able to say much in that condition.”

Deacon weighed the options. Neither one was going to be fun.

“H-his power cells won’t hold out much longer on their own,” Wallace took a tentative step forward. “Thirty minutes more...at most...give or take a little.”

Deacon sighed.

“Do it,” he gave the order. “Before I realize what a bad decision this might be.”

The Science Team sprang into action the moment he gave the word. Tom had already gained P.A.M’s consent to this foolhardy plan and she stood towering next to Valentine in standby mode. Doctor Li and T.S. Wallace were running cables from the console in P.A.M’s upper back into the cavity in Nick’s torso, one occasionally directing the other on where to set a lead.

Tom dug through his box of gadgets, retrieving an assortment of oddly shaped tech and hooking it between P.A.M, the Railroad’s auxiliary generator, and the data console. From there, he connected several other monitors that sprang to life as Wallace switched tasks and began importing their data.

The nervous self-taught engineer had said Nick had half an hour left in his own power supply. The Science Team had him hooked up and ready to charge in fifteen. 

“All right,” Tom keyed in a few sequences to the console before turning back to Deacon for approval. “Moment of truth time.”

Deacon nodded and Tom struck the enter key.

The sound of the generator increased to a steady hum. P.A.M’s face plate lit up, indicating the power level and system status. Nick’s chest sparked hard once and his eyes flickered as they opened.

“C-christ!” His voice shuddered and strained, the slight edge of a static-filled echo reverberating in his tenor.

The machinery of his body twitched and Nick’s head jerked to examine the room. His eyes came to rest on Deacon. The light in them was a dim candlelight compared to their usual neon glow.

“N-nora?” He choked, the mechanism of his throat mimicking a swallow, as he let the question hang.

Deacon put on an easy smile then and did what he knew best.

_He lied._

“She’s fine, Mister Valentine. We’ve got her.”

“W-where…?” Nick flinched. Doctor Li hadn’t been kidding about the pain receptors kicking on with the rest of him if the expression on the detective’s face was any indication.

“Resting,” Deacon reassured him. He took a step closer. “Doc’s got her sedated on a count of the bullet wounds, but other than that, she’s right as rain.”

Nick studied him a moment, but whether he was too tired or Deacon hadn’t tried an outright lie this time, he relaxed a bit.

“Hey, give me a moment with him, would you?” Deacon turned to the science team and the trio nodded before busying themselves with other tasks around the room.

Deacon snagged a chair from beside the rampway, pulling in close up on Nick’s good side. 

“So, I know you’re in a hell of a lot of pain right now and I’m an asshole for plugging you back in like this,” Deacon started. “But you and me...we need to talk.”

Nick’s jaw set for a moment before he responded.

“Am I d-dying?”

“Whoa, Christ, no, nothing like that,” Deacon forced his grin to stay even. “We haven’t crossed that bridge yet.”

_Yet._

“The thing is, this old jalopy of yours took one heck of a beating out there and good as these eggheads are, the engine is shot beyond repair,” Deacon explained, slipping into the comfort of masking real concerns with jokes.

“T-time to u-uupgrade?” Nick asked with effort.

“Not an option, man. Sorry,” Deacon leaned closer to his friend. “All these years, Charmer’s been toting how special you are and here, I just assumed it was the love goggles talking. Turns out she was right. You’re one of a kind, Nick. They broke the mold making you.”

Valentine snorted at that.

“O-options?”

Straight to business, cut the bullshit. Part of the reason Deacon had taken a liking to Nick.

“We’re backing up your power supply right now, to keep your memory drives intact, but the docs here ran into a lock in your system that’s keeping us from figuring out just what’s making you tick.”

“L-lock?”

Damn. Valentine wasn’t aware of it either.

“You’re not running on standard Institute hardware, Nick,” Deacon sighed. He was doing that alot today. “They’re hoping if we can crack the lock, we might have a better idea of how to fix you.”

_Save you._

“Listen, Amari is on her way and if anyone can help us figure you out, it’s her. But this is your head we’ll be messing with. You give the word and we won’t budge a pin.”

The lights of Nick’s eyes were flickering again and for a moment, Deacon wondered if he was even processing all this.

“O-dds?”

“It’s a long shot,” Deacon admitted. “But it’s the only one we’ve got.”

“D-do it,” Nick gave a sharp nod, a breath rasping long after his words died out.

Deacon glanced to Tom.

“We got this, D. Be ready in five.”

“We’ll have to place Mister Valentine back into auxiliary mode before we start,” Doctor Li noted quietly. “It’s less risk to the memory drives if his cognitive systems are in standby.”

The science trio began hustling around the small room again, arguing softly about procedure and how they planned to begin. Hard to believe a few short years ago, Tom had been a paranoid wreck, while Li and Wallace had been drones in the Institute, until Charmer had changed their points of view. Another win for the Railroad they owed to his old partner.

“D-dea..con.”

“I’m still with you, brother,” he caught hold of Nick’s good hand as it rose weakly off the table. The polished metal band around the synth’s ring finger cool against his palm. “Tell me what you need."

“N-nora…”

“Don’t worry about her. She’s going to be fine, Doc Carrington and Curie are with her.”

“N-need to t-tell her...t-tell N-n-nora, I-I…”

Something deep in Deacon’s chest began to ache as Nick struggled to get the words right. The pain had to be unbearable. He leaned forward, squeezing Nick’s hand in his own.

“She knows, Nick,” he whispered. “I promise you, she knows.”

Nick struggled to nod in understanding.

“T-thanks…”

“Thank me later,” Deacon was shaking now as he held Nick’s hand. “Rest up for now and we’ll go see that girl of yours together once we’ve gotten you back on your feet.”

“W-we’re ready, sir,” Wallace was behind him now. 

Nick was watching him.

Deacon nodded for them to begin.

“T-take c-aare of...her…” Valentine’s voice echoed as his systems powered back down and the light in his eyes flickered out.

The Science Trio were busy running numbers and sorting through code as they prepared their lock pick. Deacon, however, remained in his chair, holding Nick’s hand. He pinched the bridge of his nose, without moving his sunglasses and bowed his head.

If Nick died, if this failed, he’d never forgive himself.

And if Nora ever woke to a world where Nick Valentine no longer existed, Deacon knew it wouldn’t be long before she followed him into that darkness.

He knew it, because he knew her. He knew it because, he and Charmer? They were too much alike. He knew it, because it’s exactly what he wanted to do when he’d lost Barbara.

And he knew Charmer would succeed where he’d failed, because unlike him, she’d never been too scared to act when it counted.

That thought alone scared him and so he sat there, as his Team worked, holding the hand of a friend long after he’d been able to feel it.


	4. Memory Lock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Deacon and Science Team Railroad work on Nick.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wait, I lied. This is the shortest chapter.

“SYSTEM INTEGRITY AT FORTY-SEVEN PERCENT. MEMORY DRIVES ARE ONLINE. POWER TRANSFER IS HOLDING. BROADCAST SIGNAL AT NINETY-TWO PERCENT.”

“T-that’s another five percent,” Wallace tutted over P.A.M’s latest report. “H-how much longer are we going to wait?”

It’d been close to an hour since they’d shut down Nick Valentine and worked out a plan of attack against the lock in his system. P.A.M was keeping tabs on the whole operation and much to their dismay, even with the new power hook up, Nick’s systems were growing more and more unstable in their attempts to keep his memory drives intact. The Science Kids were getting anxious.

“His system stabilization has dropped below the halfway mark,” Doctor Li crossed her arms. “And the transmission signal from behind the lock is getting stronger.”

“We wait for Dr. Amari to arrive,” Deacon reminded them. He’d set Nick’s hand to rest back on the table a while ago and was now pacing the room with half of a cigarette.

“We haven’t heard a damn thing from Goodneighbor,” she snapped at him. “It could be hours before she arrives and his system is degrading.”

“She could walk through that door in the next five minutes,” Deacon noted nonchalantly.

“Or not at all,” Li argued back. “We’re not even sure what sort of information is contained behind the lock. We may be using the time we’ll need to sort through it waiting to start the procedure!”

“She’s right, D,” Tom was against him now, too. “If we want to save Charmer’s man here, we’ve gotta get moving.”

Push the button. Now or never. Make a decision.

“Jesus, fine,” Deacon stubbed out his smoke. “Let’s get this done.”

The relief in his team was palpable. Deacon hoped he hadn’t held out for too long. He hoped he’d held out long enough.

“Everybody hold onto your butts!” Tom exclaimed, punching in his passcode for the sequence. “Project Lockpick is a go!”

Deacon held his breath as P.A.M’s faceplate lit up with the new data. For a moment, all they could do was wait. Code was scrolling at an alarming rate across her LED’s. Tom clasped his shoulder in reassurance.

“Give it a moment, let the program do it’s thing.”

P.A.M suddenly emitted a loud BEEP!

“T-that’s it!” Wallace was typing furiously at his console now. “W-we’re in!”

“WARNING! TERMINAL BREACH!”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Deacon growled as the rest of his team joined Wallace in his keyboard dance.

“Give us a minute!” Doctor Li shouted from her station.

“SYSTEM LOCK COMPROMISED. ROAMING UNIT MEMORY UPLOAD INCOMPLETE. SEQUENCE TERMINATED.”

“You don’t have a minute!” Deacon yelled back, helpless now at Nick’s side.

“T-this doesn’t make any sense,” Wallace chirped, his eyes scanning through the data.

“STATIONARY UNIT UPLOAD RETENTION UNKNOWN. MANUAL UPLOAD RECOMMENDED TO REDUCE DATA LOSS.”

“Talk to me, Tom,” Deacon ordered. “How do we fix this?!”

“I don’t know man, I don’t know!” Tom shook his head in disbelief at the information scrolling down his screen.

“MANUAL NEUROTRANSMITTER EJECTION INITIATED. PLEASE DISPOSE OF ROAMING UNIT AND RETURN DATA TO STATIONARY UNIT AT C.I.T FOR REINTEGRATION.”

P.A.M.’s upper body lurched then, her face plate flashing red, before her normal functions resumed. Nick’s body seized once on the table, knocking his hands askew and emitting a strange hissing sound from deep in his chest. The plates of his chest cage creaked and hinged back from his titanium sternum, exposing the inner workings of his upper torso. The thick steel sheets that were his ribs slid back into themselves one after the other, ending with the center bone swinging sideways. A small black box with a blue LED lifted up and out of his chest cavity with another sharp hiss. The light blinked once, twice, and then the box opened.

“ROAMING UNIT DEACTIVATION COMPLETE. PLEASE REMOVE MANUAL NEUROTRANSMITTER.”

No one moved.

“PLEASE REMOVE MANUAL NEUROTRANSMITTER.” P.A.M repeated the command.

Deacon edged forward. Beneath his shoe, he felt a hard, small resistance on the floor. He lifted his foot. 

Nick’s silver ring.

Deacon bent down, his fingers brushing the cool, polished metal. It must have slipped off when Nick’s system went haywire. He pocketed it in his jeans for now, brushing the melancholy air it brought with it out of sight, before standing and resuming his path to Nick.

It was a hard thing to see his friend splayed open and unmoving on that table. He was suddenly grateful that Nora was sedated in the other lab. He wondered if she’d have wanted to be here, fully present for Nick’s final moments. He wondered if it would be less cruel if she never woke up to know at all.

The blue light on the black box was out now, much like the yellow lights of Nick’s eyes. Swallowing hard to keep the bile threatening to rise in the back of his throat down, Deacon peered wearily into the container. 

“W-what is it?” Wallace squeaked.

Deacon hesitated only a moment, before reaching into the box with three fingers and pulling out a palm-sized coiled wire attached to what looked to be a mini memory drive. Though the coil of wires had probably once been circular in shape, someone had pressed the middle down, until the coil bent, folding the opposite end of the wires into a soft “V”.

“Someone’s idea of a bad joke,” Deacon said quietly, holding the heart shaped device so that the entire class could see.

“MANUAL NEUROTRANSMITTER RECOVERY COMPLETE,” P.A.M’s voice broke the silence then, as Nick’s chest sputtered for a moment before reconstructing itself. “ROAMING UNIT IS NOW READY FOR DISPOSAL. PLEASE RETURN MANUAL NEUROTRANSMITTER TO C.I.T FOR STATIONARY UNIT REINTEGRATION.”

“W-why does she keep saying that?” Wallace frowned.

“That’s what we’re gonna figure out,” Deacon’s hand slid over the remains of Nick’s good one and squeezed. The muscles there didn’t return his gesture, the warmth it once held now gone. “Preferably before Charmer wakes up and realizes we’ve killed her husband.”

“There’s a lot of data to sort through,” Doctor Li turned to her teammates. “When the system lock was cracked, P.A.M managed to download a collection of hidden files and some more information on that transmission.”

“T-the code wasn’t making any sense,” Wallace shook his head. “I-it seemed to indicate that...that his main memory core wasn’t here. His body wasn’t r-registering any long term memory drives. B-but, that’s not possible, right? Right?”

“It could be a glitch in the data,” Li offered. “We won’t know more until we read through the files.”

“Let’s get to it then,” Deacon held out the coiled heart he’d taken from Nick’s chest. “And while we’re at it, someone figure out what the hell this thing is for...without breaking it, please.”

“I’m on it,” Tom took the device, treating it like a wounded bird. 

Deacon stood there a moment longer as his team got back to work. He patted the edge of the detective’s shoulder before heading out of the room to find a drink.

“It was a long shot,” his hands tucked into his jean pockets, the ring bumping against fingers in his right one. “Too long.”


	5. The Words She Left Behind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the cavalry arrives.

It was half past nine when the group from Goodneighbor arrived. Drummer Boy entered first with Doctor Amari at his side. Desdemona nodded in the direction of P.A.M’s room and the pair nodded in acknowledgement before heading off in that direction.

Piper and Preston followed next, Piper heading straight for Desdemona. The two women had never quite gotten on over the years, but out of Nora’s companions from Goodneighbor, she was the only one who’d actually been to HQ previously. 

Piper wasn’t exactly sure of the type of greeting they would receive. Drummer Boy had been reluctant to let them tag along, but with the amount of weaponry her group had between them and their persistence, he’d hardly been in a position to stop them.

“It’s good that you’re here,” Desdemona reached out to take Piper’s hand, before the reporter could say anything. Whatever Piper had expected her to say, it wasn’t that.

“We were in the neighborhood,” she said, gesturing to Preston before extending the motion to include Cait and MacCready when they cleared the entrance. “This is Cait and MacCready. Preston’s with the Minutemen.”

“We’ve met once before, Ma’am,” Preston extended a hand which Desdemona met with a firm, but friendly shake. “At the Mass Fusion building.”

“I wish we were meeting again under better circumstances,” the leader of the Railroad offered with a sympathetic grimace. “But we can use all the help we can get right now. Were you able to secure the supplies for Doctor Carrington?

“We...uh...we did you one better,” Piper turned back towards the doorway again.

His stride was smooth and commanding as he crested the entryway into the main room of HQ. The red of his coat, flaring out behind him as he walked forward, black eyes surveying the space and the people therein as they watched him. John Hancock was a legend throughout the Commonwealth among criminals and heroes alike, and though the Mayor of Goodneighbor had been a long standing friend to the Railroad, he’d never graced HQ with his presence until now. One hand hovered at the tattered flag wrapped around his waist while in the other, a heavy looking black leather doctor’s bag swung in time with his stride.

He stopped just short of Desdemona, barely moving his head to look down at her. His dark eyes narrowed.

“Where is _she_?”

“I assume you’re the John she left the message for,” Desdemona said, mimicking his stance and meeting his eye with a defiant tilt of her head. His cheek twitched at her words. He wasn’t all stone beneath the facade. 

“Follow me,” she cocked her head slightly in the direction of the new lab.

They’d remodeled the gun range nearly two years ago. With the Institute gone and some of it’s former scientists now working with the Railroad to pursue a better life for the Commonwealth, they’d needed a space to work. Enclosed by heavy plastic draping, the room acted as a medbay, hydroponics lab and research facility. The blue veneer of the salvaged machines cast a soft hue throughout the space and it looked peaceful when the few white lights throughout illuminated it.

Desdemona led Hancock through the plastic sheeting to where Nora lay in their only medical bed. Doctor Carrington and Curie had managed to get her stabilized and stop the bleeding. They’d removed the bullets from her leg and had done a preliminary patch job on the wound above her hip, but she was still a bloody and bruised mess. Beneath the dried blood and ink stains from Nick’s coolant, her skin was as pale as the white sheets she lay out on. A fine sheen of sweat was beading her skin and clad only in her undergarments, the freckles that dotted the length of her body stood out unnaturally against her pallor.

Whatever Desdemona had meant to tell him died on her lips as she watched the ghoul square his shoulders and walk towards Nora. One mottled hand skimmed the length of her as he took in her injuries, finally coming to rest over her right arm as he read the message there. He snorted softly, shaking his head, before reaching for the her other wrist.

His eyes were too dark to see move, but she could tell he was skimming the list as she had, his thumb gently circling the final words she’d left behind for him. For a moment, Desdemona thought it might be anger bleeding into his expression now, but as quickly as it began to mar his features, they settled back into something more neutral.

“Good girl,” he murmured and set her wrist back at her side. 

He brushed the sweat drenched strands of hair from her forehead in a gesture that seemed too intimate to be privy to, before turning back to Desdemona with purpose. 

“Get a table in here,” his voice was low, gritty and authoritative. “And move that chem station out there over here as well.”

John waited for her to leave before turning back to Nora. 

“Been a hell of a night for you, Sunshine,” his expression softened as he watched her breathe through the short, shallow breaths of her overdose. “You hang on for me and we’ll get you out of this. Ain’t got nothing to worry about with me watching your back.”

He lingered by her side a moment longer, before stepping back to watch the Railroad agents carrying in his requests. They set the table down beside him and John slung his heavy doctor’s bag atop it. It had been a present years ago from, Nora. A find she’d pulled out of the rubble and had given him with a clever comment about taking some of the weight out of his coat. Despite his grumblings about it at the time, the damn thing had proved useful on more than one occasion when one of his fine citizens partied a little too long and hard and needed his help to keep breathing.

Funny, but he’d never expected to be opening his black bag of tricks for her someday.

Hancock had the goods all set up and was already mixing a new batch of his special shit, when Doc Carrington and Curie filtered into the room. 

“Ah, Monsieur Hancock! It is a pleasure to see you again!”

“Looking good, Curie,” he nodded at her, but kept to his task.

Doctor Carrington was not as enamored as his companion at Hancock’s intrusion into his lab. His gaze ran over the various vials and syringes, taking quick note that some of them had already been used.

“What have you given her?” He demanded.

“What’d _you_ give her?” Hancock shot back. “She ain’t breathin’ too well, if you hadn’t noticed.”

“A mild sedative,” he said indignantly. “And another dose of Med-X for the pain.”

“See, that’s what’s putting her lungs to sleep right now,” Hancock shook his head, allowing the mixture to drip slowly into the glass vial he’d set for it. “Nora here’s already had her maximum dose of Med-X for the day.”

“Nonsense, a woman of her body size could take twice the amount.”

“Not with all the other shit she’s got tearing up her veins right now,” Hancock retrieved the vial, now full of a vibrant purple liquid. “The first dose she took had enough kick in it to send a Brahmin flying. Any more than that with all the Psycho she’s still got in her system’s just gonna tell her lungs to take a vacation.”

John held the glass up to the light now, examining the contents with a careful eye before loading it into a small injector.

“This shit will take care of the Med-X,” he explained before Doc Carrington could lodge another complaint. He slid the needle into her arm and watched the chem disappear beneath her skin. A moment passed and her breathing evened out. “Just enough of a stimulant to get her airways clear. Then we’ve gotta work on flushing out the Psycho before it starts overheating her brain.”

“I wasn’t aware that was a side-effect of Psycho,” the Doctor edged closer to watch what Hancock grabbed for next.

“It ain’t,” the ghoul snatched up three more vials, headed to the chem station. “But you cut it with a little of this and a whole lotta that and you’d be surprised that shit can do.”

Doctor Carrington was turning red in the face. Curie stepped in before he exploded.

“Is there anything we can do to aide you?”

Hancock seemed genuinely surprised by the offer. He took her up on it.

“Get another IV going and some water. The next couple rounds are going to have her sweatin’ out. Grab some blankets. And any kind of sedative you’ve got.”

“You want to give her more sedatives?” Carrington sounded incredulous now. “After you’ve just gotten her lungs going again?”

“Look, I get it, you don’t like me, I think fuck all about you,” Hancock shrugged as he measured out his chems. “Problem is, I do give a shit about what happens to Nora. Now this Psycho she dosed on ain’t fun to come down off of to begin with and she’s one hit beyond the safety limit. Ain’t made for recreational purposes, you feel me?”

John set the next batch of chems to drip mix and pulled his mentat tin free from his coat pocket. He slid the tablet into his mouth with practiced ease, eyes fixed on his friend in the bed.

“Long story short, she did what she had to do and I’m here to do what I can for her. The next couple days are gonna be hell getting her system clean and right now, we’re on kind of a tight schedule before blood vessels start burstin’. The nicest thing we can do for her is to keep her sleeping until we can get her through the tough shit.”

John strolled easily over to Carrington, hand back in his coat pockets as he leaned slightly over the shorter man.

“If you want to help with that, you help with that, otherwise,” he snarled. “Stay the fuck out of my way.”

For a moment, Curie was certain they’d come to blows, but as Doc Carrington looked Hancock dead in the eye, instead, he backed down.

“Then it will be an interesting couple of days for the both of us,” Carrington noted. “Charmer’s been through enough. I’ll bow to your knowledge of the designer chems she’s been taking, but Curie and I will be here to help monitor her vital functions. I’d prefer not to have to resuscitate her a second time, not with the break in her ribs. She can’t handle another bout of shock right now.”

That pulled Hancock back in line and any quarrel the two men seemed to have died between them. The Mayor nodded and extended a hand, which Carrington shook sharply. They parted ways to attend to their business and Curie left them occasionally barking at one another over supplies.

“How’s she doing?”

Piper was waiting for her as Curie breached the plastic curtain of the lab. The look on the reporter’s face said it all: She was scared.

“Not as badly now, I think,” Curie offered a small smile in place of a miracle. “Monsieur Hancock and Doctor Carrington have come to terms. I do not doubt that we can treat her.”

“And Nick?”

“I do not know,” Curie sounded as worried then as Piper felt. “No one has said anything to me about his condition...and it has been a while since Monsieur Deacon has come out again.”

“Thanks, Curie,” Piper patted her shoulder in support. “I’m sure Blue is in good hands. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Mayor move that fast to get out of his town before. If...if she wakes up, let her know that we’re here.”

They parted ways as Curie headed to Doc Carrington’s alcove for more supplies and Piper headed back to her small group behind the war table. Desdemona had joined the others, Cait handing her the bloodied postal bag they’d found on the way there.

“When your boy came running for us, figured it might be worth a trip ‘round the way Nicky and Nora had gone. Took us a couple a tries to find the street, but it was a right mess when we got there.”

“They really took out a courser with a couple of pistols and a pocketknife…” Desdemona held Nick’s gun carefully in her hands. It needed a good cleaning, but it was in better shape than Nora’s.

“By the looks of it, they’d dug in and were waiting him out,” MacCready continued the story, gesturing with his hands as he explained the layout of the street and scene. “Took both their clips and a new smile along his throat before they’d dropped him. Didn’t look like he’d gotten off more than five or six shots.”

MacCready glanced back at P.A.M’s room suspiciously then.

“He must have hit Valentine at least once close range though. Really close range by the blast pattern near the car and the black puddle on the ground. Getting hit that close with an Institute Rifle would tear a man in two.”

“Jesus, MacCready,” Piper kicked him as she came to take a seat near Preston.

“I’m just saying,” he rubbed at the side of his leg, giving Piper a dirty look. “Nora must be doing okay for you to be back here so quick, but no one’s offering up the same kind of assurance on her partner, there.”

“Best pals with Nicky now, are we?” Cait slapped a hand on his knee, giving him a knowing look.

“Look, I don’t have to like the guy to respect what he is to the boss,” he sat back on the couch, arms crossed and thoughtful. “If he’s dying and there’s something we can do about it, I’d like to know. She’s already lost one husband and I...I can’t imagine going through that kind of pain again.”

“You may look like a pretty bastard, but you’re all heart, y’know,” Cait winked at him.

“He’s right, though,” Desdemona admitted. “Mister Valentine was in poor shape when they arrived tonight. Knowing that they fought and took down a courser explains some of his wounds, but it won’t help us much in trying to fix them.”

She, too, was looking towards P.A.M’s room now. 

“Deacon’s been with the team in there for hours and with Amari’s help, I don’t doubt they’ll come up with a solution soon.”

“So..,” Piper grimaced, looking around at the melancholy group. “What do we do in the meantime?”

Preston had been quiet throughout the exchange, his mind still running over the scene they’d found with the dead courser. He’d seen that man before, standing next to the General, when she’d been the General. Nora had never seemed comfortable with him. He acted more like a watchdog then a friend.

“We hurry up and wait,” he said quietly.


	6. Manual Transmission

Deacon and Team Science stood around Nick’s empty shell, waiting as Amari took in their report from the head of the table. Though she’d listened intently, her eyes had stayed fixed to Nick’s face, a look of regret in her features. They hadn’t given her enough time to process the loss of a friend.

“Not to rush you doc,” Deacon cleared his throat. “But the sooner we can get some intel going on this, the calmer I’m going to feel.”

Amari shook her head.

“Two mnemonic locks in one system,” she murmured. “You truly were unique.”

“You should see the thing that came outta his chest,” Tom mimicked the motion with his hands. “Shit came straight out of a comic book, I swear.”

“Not helping, Tom,” Deacon sighed. “Out of all of us, you’re the most familiar with Nick’s head here, Doc. There’s gotta be something you can tell us.”

“I’m afraid I’m no more well versed in dual mnemonic locks than Doctor Li,” she began, though she seemed still to be deep in thought about something. “That level of encryption seems an unnecessary precaution. Even on the most advanced synths, one lock made the memory reassignment procedure quite dangerous and we were never able to breach the security that disabled a synth’s memory of getting into our out of the Institute.”

“What about Kellogg?” Deacon ran a hand over his scalp, mind desperate for some sort of break in their current predicament. “Charmer said you’d helped her break through his lock and discovered the teleportation deal there.”

“Kellogg was a different matter,” Amari shook her head. “We bypassed his neural interface by hooking him up to Nick and running Nora’s memories through the combined system. The discovery of the teleportation technology was a coincidence, one I’m still not entirely sure Mr. Kellogg didn’t want us to find.”

“That was a clever way to get around it,” Doctor Li looked mildly impressed. Deacon hoped it might be the start of a useful friendship.

“It does get me thinking though,” Amari frowned. “I believe I might have encountered the second lock with Nick once before, though admittedly, I had no idea what I’d run into at the time.”

Amari moved to one of the consoles now, bringing up one of her private files. 

“Many years ago now, Nick came to the Memory Den looking for a way to separate himself from the memories of the real Nick Valentine. It seemed simple enough based on our experience working with the Gen 3’s, but when I began the procedure to section of his old memories from the new I hit a failsafe that prevented me from tampering with the original Nick’s data.”

Amari pulled up a file full of code for the Science Team to peruse.

“His systems began to shut down faster than I could save them and it was all I could do to stop the procedure before his core memory drives began dumping information. By the time I got him back up and running again, he had a month long gap in his personal memory files.”

Amari pointed to a section of code.

“The strange thing about it all, is that those files weren’t deleted. The code seems to indicate some sort of emergency transfer to prevent data loss, but to what drives, I couldn’t tell you.”

“T-that’s the same code from the signal!” Wallace exclaimed, taking over the terminal to pull up his findings from earlier in the evening. “H-here, see?”

“But that’s not possible,” Amari wondered at what she was reading now on the screen. “This would indicate that Nick’s core memory drive isn’t housed in his skull.”

“Let me add to that mystery,” Doctor Li chimed in, pulling up her own research on the next terminal over. “I had Pam run some custom diagnostics on Mister Valentine’s system. All of his memory drives are temporary slaves. They look like core drives, they read at first like core drives, but it’s just a mask. Whoever designed his neuronet, the drives are designed to collect and process information, but not to store it. They’re all pulling from some outside source and reporting any new data back to it.”

“That seems like a strange security measure,” Amari wrinkled her nose. “Why would you take the time to disguise a temporary drive for a core?”

“Maybe, because Nick’s creator didn’t want anyone to discover the location of his main drive,” Tom added in a rushed tone. “Which would explain the magic I’m about to drop on you.”

He held up the heart shaped coil Deacon had removed from Nick’s chest. 

“This, my friends, is one sweet little piece of tech. I’ve named her Lola,” he added proudly.

“That’s great, Tom, really, loving the naming conventions,” Deacon forced a grin. “But what does she do?”

“That is the magic part, D. Lola here is a transmitter; a super transmitter. All the information from Nick’s brain has been filtering out through this bad girl for quite some time now, and, whatever doesn’t get sent, gets backed up on this little beauty here.”

He pointed to the small drive attached to the coil.

“This tiny little deal can hold a shitton of information,” Tom’s eyes were wide as if to emphasize his words. “The entire life of Nick Valentine the synth is contained in this one tiny drive.”

“So,” Deacon was trying desperately to follow along. Next time, Dez could lead Science Team and he’d deal with Doc Carrington. “Lola here is Nick’s core drive?”

“You wouldn’t be wrong to think so, but you’re wrong,” Tom grinned at him. “This here is the backup. The master drive is what it’s been transmitting to all this time.”

“You said that drive contains all of Nick’s memories as a synth,” Amari cut in suddenly. “What about his memories from the original?”

“Not stored locally,” Tom shook his head. “Lola’s got a backup of all the Synth Nick’s life, but the original’s memories are probably on the core drive. I don’t think those files were ever actually stored in Nick’s body. He was pulling them from the core drive.”

Science Team plus Amari seemed to reel at Tom’s declaration.

“Oh my god,” Amari exclaimed.

“That’s amazing,” Doctor Li agreed.

“Whoa, wait, time out!” Deacon crossed his arms in front of him. “Let’s try to explain this revelation to the not-science guy in the room.”

“Mister Valentine’s core drive wasn’t housed in his body,” Doctor Li grinned--actually grinned--at him. “And Lola there has been transmitting all his temporary information to the core drive.”

“Which means?”

“Which means, somewhere out there in the Commonwealth, Nick’s core drive is still active,” Amari looked happy enough to cry. “It means his mind is literally elsewhere.”

“A-and that elsewhere might have a spare body for him that...that the core drive is running from,” Wallace nodded in agreement.

“When Pam engaged the lock and his systems were shutting down, she kept referring to a roaming unit and a stationary unit,” Doctor Li was shaking with excitement now. “If this Valentine was the roaming unit…”

“Then what the hell’s up with the stationary one,” Deacon was getting it now. “But, wait...she also said something about an upload not completing.”

“When t-the detective’s systems fell be-below 50 percent, the transmitter starting uploading all his t-temporary data to the core,” Wallace referred to a spike in the code on the screen. “B-but when we tampered with the...with the lock it cut the, uh, the upload.”

“Which is why it ejected the backup,” Doctor Li held up the heart shaped transmitter. “Lola here is the copy you keep to manually upload data when the transmission fails.”

“Please tell me what you’re saying is that we can save Nick,” Deacon was so tense, he’d need a week to recoup after all this.

“We can save Nick,” Amari smiled. “If the core drive is running out of another body, we can sync the transmitter to the core drive and repair whatever data loss may have occurred when the lock security shut his systems down in this body.”

“A-and, we can trace the signal from the original...uh...data to find the receiving point,” Wallace added. “Pam mentioned returning the drive to C.I.T...i-if we narrow the search parameters there...we...we might find it faster.”

“YES!” Deacon cheered, throwing his hands high. “Score one for the Science Team!”

“Yeeeah, ‘bout that,” Tom interjected. “It might be a little early to start celebrating yet. There’s one more thing about Lola here you’re all forgetting.”

“Lay it on me, Tom,” Deacon clapped his shoulder. “Right now, I’m ready for anything.”

“Lola here isn’t just any old super transmitter, she’s a _neuro_ transmitter,” Tom held the device up to the light. “She ain’t designed to transfer data from one robot brain to another. She’s more like...a medical device.”

“Oh...ohh…”Amari blinked rapidly. “Oh dear.”

“What?” Deacon was quickly losing his groove. “What’s oh dear?”

“Lola’s designed to transmit signals to an implant, D,” Tom pointed to the back of his own head. “Like, the kind of implant they used on Kellogg, man.”

“She’s not transmitting to a core drive,” Amari’s hand was at her throat, her head shaking and her eyes glassy. “Lola’s transmitting to a brain implant.”

For a moment, the room was silent.

“Okay,” Deacon took a calming breath. “I’ll admit, when I said I was ready for anything...maybe not that.”

“S-so...what now?” Wallace dabbed at his brow with his little handkerchief. 

Deacon didn’t need to consider his options this time. There wasn’t really a choice anymore.

“So now,” he started, turning face the group. “You said you could trace that signal, start tracing it.”

“Y-yes, sir!”

“The rest of you,” Deacon addressed the others. “Make damn sure we know how Lola works. We do this, we’re doing it with our eyes wide open this time.”

“We got this,” Tom acknowledged. “What about you, D?”

“I’m...gonna go get my ass kicked. Probably,” he shook his head. Deacon had caught a glimpse of MacCready and company on their way in. He hoped they’d handle the whole thing better than he had. Mac wasn’t great at close range, but Cait could really pack a wallup.

As he strode by Nick’s body this time, he smiled. By this time tomorrow, they’d have him back on his feet, one way or another. 

Recovering his pompadour wig from where he’d tossed it earlier, Deacon straightened out his hair and prepared to meet the troops.

He’d made it all of three steps from P.A.M’s room before Piper caught sight of him.

“Deacon! How’s Nick?!”

Literally everyone in earshot turned to look at him after her outburst. He raised a hand in greeting, ignoring the expectant faces on the agents around them. Too many ears around for this kind of information..

So much for discretion.

“Heeey, Piper, you’re looking especially nosey today,” he plastered a smirk on his face. He could still play this cool.

“Don’t start with me, Dickhead,” she tossed back. “You guys have been in there forever, what’s going on?”

“Hey now, Rome wasn’t built in a day,” he tried again, leaning into her shoulder and adding quietly. “Not here.”

“Oh god, is it bad? It’s bad, isn’t it?” She whispered back.

“Chill, Piper, let’s get the old gang rounded up and have us a little fireside chat.”

The others were already on their feet. 

“Deacon?” Desdemona looked at him expectantly. 

Aw, hell.

“We’ve had a little change in plan with Mister Valentine,” he spoke quickly so no one got the wrong idea. “This is now a rescue mission.”

“Glory, you’re on control duty,” Dez stepped out from behind her place at the war table, turning to the group from Goodneighbor. “The rest of you with me.”

“Whoa, whoa, that’s not the best idea right now,” Deacon chased them as the group headed back to P.A.M’s room.

“Jesus, Deacon, what’s got your knickers in a...oh,” Cait stopped dead as she entered the room. Not that Deacon blamed her. Seeing a big hole in the middle of one of your pals had that effect on people. “Oh, Nicky...that bastard’s lucky you killed him before we got to it.”

Ok, crowd control time needed to happen sooner than later. Preferably before those tears in Piper’s eyes started spilling.

“Right, so I know this looks bad..” Was all Deacon managed to get out before MacCready had him up against the wall, fists balled up in his shirt and ready to swing. He took back what he said about the former gunner. He wasn’t too bad at close combat.

“You sonofa…”

“HEY! Language!” Deacon shouted him down. “In case you’ve forgotten, there’s a whole mess of people out there right now, including the girl he’s married to. Maybe we can keep our asshole voices to ourselves for now!”

MacCready stepped back as if he’d just been burned. Admittedly, it’d been a low blow, but Deacon had too much shit to deal with at the moment to aim higher.

“Let’s start over,” he smoothed his shirt back out and gestured them towards Science Team Awesome. It wasn’t great, but he’d find a name to stick. “Kids, meet the gang. Gang, meet the kids.”

Deacon stalked beyond the group in on the ramp to come up beside Nick’s body. 

“This looks bad, believe me I know. But hear me out before anybody else takes a swing at me.”

“Is he...is he dead?” Piper sniffled, Preston already beside her and in comfort mode.

“Yes and no,” Deacon flipped on palm back and forth. “The bad news is, we couldn’t save this Nick. He took a real beating out there and with the tech he’s running on, we’re lucky we got as far as we did with him tonight.”

“What do you mean by, ‘this Nick’?” Preston frowned at him.

“Well, here’s the good news,” Deacon gestured towards the four scientists still gaping at him in the room. “Science Team Neat-o here has surmised this Nick, who we all know and love and are totally not disparaging right now, is only a component part of the real Nick.”

“Does this speech come in English?” MacCready snorted.

“Funny. Let me know if I’m talking science too fast for you, Mac. Till then I’ll use smaller words.”

“Jerk,” MacCready looked away.

Deacon ignored the pointed look Doctor Li gave him just then and continued. 

“When Nick’s system’s failed, it triggered some kind of failsafe and long story short, this Nick has been transferring all his data to some kind of master brain for years.”

Piper looked straight at Amari.

“What Mister Deacon is trying to say,” she shook her head. “Is that there may be another version of Nick Valentine out there right now. The data we received from his body before it shut down indicates that this Nick was some kind of remote unit. There’s another unit somewhere under the C.I.T that may have been piloting it all this time.”

“Piloting it?” Desdemona looked down at Nick’s broken body. “What was the Institute doing with him? ...either of him?”

Tom went to speak, but Deacon cut him off.

“We won’t know until we get there. This,” he held up the heart shaped transmitter. “Is part of what’s been connecting the two Nick’s all this time and Wally there’s working at back tracking the signal it was sending to.”

“Her name is Lola,” Tom grumbled behind him.

“Right, sorry,” Deacon corrected himself. “Look, I’ll be the first guy to say, this is some weird shit, but that’s kind of par for the course in the Commonwealth. I have no idea what we might find out there, but if there is another part of Nick out there and we can find him, we might just be able to tie up a happy ending.”

“This...sounds crazy,” Preston finally said.

“I’m in,” MacCready stepped forward from where he’d been leaning against the wall. “Crazy or not, I don’t want the boss waking up to see Valentine like this.”

The group nodded in agreement. Whatever Institute crap they were about to delve into, it’d be worth it if only for their friends.

“So,” Piper wiped at an eye with the back of her hand. “When do we leave?”

Deacon turned to Wallace.

“W-we’ll have the transmission point within the hour.”

“We leave at first light,” Deacon dropped the order. “Till then, rest up...and uh, hope this isn’t a false alarm, ‘cause we are all out of other options.”

“The C.I.T’s still not a secure area,” Preston said thoughtfully. “Lotta activity in that area with Gen 1’s and ferals. You got a ham radio around here?”

“What are you thinking, Preston?” Piper turned to the Minuteman.

“Let me put in a call to General Deegan,” he gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “ If we ask for help on this one, he’ll make sure the roads are clear for us. He still owes some kind of life debt to Nora.”

“Don’t we all,” Desdemona smirked at Deacon. “Come with me, we can get you in touch with the Castle out here.”

The group slowly filtered back out into the main room, chatting with Desdemona about the supplies they’d need for the journey. MacCready stayed back, stepping softly forward towards Nick’s body once they were gone.

“Didn’t expect you to volunteer for this one, Mac,” Deacon’s voice held an edge of playfulness. “Maybe you aren’t such a bad guy after all.”

“I hope to God you’re right about this,” MacCready ignored him, his gaze fixed on the hole that consumed most of Valentine’s gut. 

Deacon’s voice dropped suddenly to match his mood. 

“Yeah, Mac. Yeah, me too.”


	7. Save Nick

Despite leaving at first light, it’d still taken the small group until late morning to reach the C.I.T ruins. Preston’s call to the minutemen had proven useful, and true to his word, the roads were clear all the way up to the university’s grand rotunda. As they walked by groups of minutemen, the civilian soldiers tipped their leather hats in respect, many of them having served under Nora when the Institute fell and twice that number having joined once they’d heard about what she’d done for the Commonwealth during the war.

General Deegan was waiting for them on the steps of the C.I.T. He’d been an unknown to the group before Nora walked into the Castle with him one day and within a month had named him as her replacement. It took a while for some of the troops to adjust to the gravel-voiced ghoul wearing the blue duster, but Nora had made a good pick. Much like her, Deegan didn’t kill unless he had to and he had a surprising knowledge of ground tactics, military organization and, of all things, cooking. Nora had mentioned he’d served under a single family for a vast, but undisclosed amount of time and whatever he’d done for them, he must have done it well. For all the gruffness he seemed to embody, Edward Deegan had a soft side, one that had shown mercy when necessary and hardened to a battle-worn soldier when talking wasn’t an option.

He absolutely refused to wear the General’s hat, however, preferring an old cap he’d been given as a gift by the family he’d once served.

“General,” Preston tipped his hat as they neared him.

“Preston,” he nodded in response. “How’s she doing?”

“She took a beating,” he spoke freely. “But we expect a full recovery.”

“Nora’s a tough woman,” he grunted. “She’ll pull through.”

“Thanks for clearing the road for us, General..uh, sir,” Piper smiled at him. Deegan still made her nervous.

“We serve the people, kid,” he ushered them in through the front doors, pointing to several men and women stationed throughout. “Couple of old mutant corpses up there and a boatload of broken synths, but we cleaned out the place pretty good.”

“Thank you again, General,” Preston shook his hand.

“Anytime,” Deegan gave a mock salute. “You need anything, you give us a yell. And when you see Nora...let her know we’ve still got her back when she needs it.”

They watched him head back outside, before Piper spoke.

“You ever get the feeling Blue’s life has been a whole lot more exciting than she let’s on?”

“You’re just sniffin’ for another interview,” Cait cackled and lead the way. “Comon’, that squirrely science lad said it’d be on the next floor.”

Preston and MacCready followed the women, with Deacon and Tom breaking up the rear.

“See?” Deacon threw an arm around Tom’s shoulders as he looked around warily. “Armed guards, clear roads, nothing to worry about, right?”

“I told you last time, Deacon” Tom hissed, glancing at every shadow. “I don’t do field work! Who knows what kinda crazy, mind-altering shit the Institute stocked in here…”

“Hey now, I thought we were moving past the whole paranoia thing, buddy,” Deacon chided him as they hit the stairs. “Besides, the last time you went out with me I got you your very own vertibird, remember?”

“Don’t you go bringing Miranda into this,” Tom frowned. “This shit is different.”

“It’s gonna be fine, Tom, relax. You do the science stuff and we’ll make sure you live through it.”

“Oh, man,” Tom whined as they hit the second floor.

Preston took the lead again. 

“All right,” he checked the paper in his hands now. “According to the Science Team, there should be a door near here to a small office.”

Cait and Piper each picked a nearby door. Cait won. 

“Okay, tiny office,” MacCready stood on his tiptoes to see over the others already inside the room. There wasn’t enough space for more than three of them to fit inside. “Now what?”

“The schematics Doctor Li found show another door in the room,” Preston tucked the paper he held into a pocket. “Let’s move the furniture out. See what we find.”

“You take me to the nicest places,” Piper remarked as she and Cait passed him with the large wooden desk. 

“Anything for you, babe,” Preston winked before helping Deacon with one of the four filing cabinets. 

“Hey, we got something here,” MacCready called out to them as he shoved the other two cabinets to one side of the room. 

“Of course it would have to be a spooky trap door,” Piper mused.

MacCready yanked it open, the metal landing with a loud clang as it hit the back wall of the room. The way down was little more than a rusted rung ladder. It was too dark to tell how far down it went.

“Ladies first?” The mercenary gestured towards the hatch.

“Ha ha, you’re a real scream, MacCready,” Piper rolled her eyes.

“Here,” Tom handed Deacon a thick plastic stick.

“Uh, thanks, man. Real generous of you,” Deacon looked at the stick in confusion.

“It glows,” Tom informed him. “Crack it and toss it.”

Deacon did as Tom instructed, and the stick lit up in a fluorescent blue light. He dropped it down the shaft. Sometime later it hit the bottom.

“Yay,” Piper looked enthusiastically down at the ladder. “Well, who’s going into the deep scary pit first?”

“Christ, yer all a buncha children,” Cait sat on the edge of the trap door entry and eased herself down the ladder. “Last one down’s a rotten mirk egg!”

It took a good ten minutes to get their whole group to the bottom, but once they had all made it down, Preston bent over to grab the glow stick. 

“Wait, shine that back over her a second,” Tom said excitedly and when Preston did so, the shape of a fuse box illuminated through the shadows. “Bring it closer and we’ll work some magic.”

A minute later and the fuse box sparked to life. The hum of a generator could be heard from somewhere beneath the floor and one by one the underground facility lights came on, until they no longer needed the glow stick.

“Nice work,” Deacon patted him on the back before venturing forward down the long corridor. “So Wally said this was a service entrance into some sort of lab. Front door might still be accessible, but this was the safer bet for entry. If we have to get out fast...no guarantees.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Preston had his rifle out, taking point. “Which way?”

“Should be a door just to our left here, which’ll take us out of the service tunnels and into the main facility,” Deacon recited by memory.

They came to a door marked C.I.T NEUROTECHNOLOGY DEPT in small block letters. Preston reached for the handle, looking back at his group. Guns were up and everyone accounted for. 

“Ready?”

He threw his weight into the door as he pressed it open, rifle at the ready. He’d expected misplaced synths or ferals, but what was on the other side of the door, was neither.

“Yeesh, look at this place,” Piper frowned, stepping into the room. “Someone wasn’t fond of the decorating.”

The room was a scattering of desks, computers and hardware. Thick patches of blast marks pocketed the walls and ground where laser rifles had once gone off. MacCready pressed through the group and went to examine the blast marks.

“These have been here awhile,” he frowned. “Whoever did this, it’s been a heck of a long time since anyone last visited.”

“Better for us,” Piper said under her breath, taking stock of a couple of skeletons, their lab coats pristine save for the dust. “Don’t think these guys were killed in the firefight.”

“Probably pre-war,” MacCready agreed.

“Let’s keep moving,” Preston urged them.

“Hold up,” Tom headed for one of the intact terminals. “Let’s see if we can get some information first.”

He slid into one of the better looking rolling chairs at the terminal station and rebooted the machine. Quick as a flash, he had a collection of personal logs in front of them. 

“Lotta data here,” Tom noted, pulling a holotape out of his overalls pocket and sliding it into the holoport. “Might be good to have this for later.”

As the download started, he continued scrolling through the names of the scientists who’d once worked there.  
“This thing reads like the Institute’s Most Wanted list…”

Neurosurgeons, Tech P.H.D’s, Mad scientists… He stopped abruptly and left one name highlighted.

“Johannes S. Birk,” he whistled. “Man, this dude was hardcore.”

“Oh yeah?” Deacon feigned interest as the rest of the group picked around the room for anything of interest.

“Dude, he’s like the grandfather of neuroscience. Half of Amari’s tech at the Memory Den is based off his early research with the human brain,” Tom clicked the name and began sorting through personal letters. “Lotta the Institute’s knowledge was born in that man.”

While they waited on the download, Tom clicked on one of Dr. Birk’s personal logs. A man’s voice echoed throughout the room, his accent minor, but foreign to the Commonwealth natives.

_“Personal Log of Dr. Johannes Birk, July 26th 2077. I’m growing weary of my colleagues and their lack of vision. The first generation of synthetic men were little more than metal skeletons, but this new generation! They could be so much more. Even as they work to advance the A.I. systems, they lack the creativity to see how they could be applied to more humanistic ventures. They cover them with shoddy plastic skin and plain faceplates and worry more about their reactions on an obstacle course than what they might think of a painting._

_It bores me._

_And still they call for me to work on their systems, wanting more advanced hardware, but limiting the scope of what we could achieve. The world is practically tearing itself apart in this endless war and they want more robots. With an advanced enough system, we could place the brains of living men inside the machines and find a way to live forever. Without the burdens of an organic body, think of all the resources that would no longer be expended...there would be no need for war then. We would be free to spend our days living as we wished, creating and exploring and discovering with a passion our ancestors once knew._

_I have begun the groundwork on a new project, one which I hope will advance the betterment of all mankind. It will take years yet to perfect the A.I. model I have in mind, but if this new contract with Vault-Tec proves successful, and I can solve their issue with the cryo-technology, they’ve promised I may keep the prototype for myself._

_Then the real work can begin.”_

 

By the time the log had finished, the others had joined Tom at the terminal.

“Did that sound like crazy talk to anyone else? Or is it just me?” MacCready shook his head in disbelief.

“Play another one,” Deacon said, suddenly more interested in Dr. Birk than he’d been a minute earlier.

 

_“Personal Log of Dr. Johannes Birk, September 16th, 2077._

_I completed the work for Vault-Tec and true to their word, the prototype is now safe and secure in my own personal lab. I’ll have to make further modifications to the unit if the neurotransmitter is going to integrate properly into the system. A frozen body is one thing, but a frozen brain is quite useless to me. I’ve already developed the solution, though Vault-Tec didn’t seem interested in maintaining brain function during stasis. What a waste of an opportunity they had. With their facilities, they could create a hundred test subjects to my one._

_I’ve begun screening for possible candidates. Officially, the department has been doing brain scans of trauma patients to see if there’s any way to rewrite the memories that cause them trouble in the hopes of adapting that technology to the Gen 2’s to stop that problematic loophole in their programming when one command supersedes another. I, however, am more interested in the patients. People who have experienced extreme trauma would make excellent candidates for the transferral._

_Imagine taking someone who has experienced the worst life has to offer and giving them the gift of a new life. Free from fear, free from aging, free from death. If I can develop the systems to mimic every aspect of human life, they’ll be able to choose what activities they wish to participate in, rather than being forced by organic needs to partake. I dream of finding an individual who is worthy of transcending their many pains and taking on this new kind of life._

_The first few men and women have been less than ideal candidates. I had thought to try out soldiers for their obvious experience with trauma, but I find their personalities to be lacking and their demeanor hard to control._

_There is still time yet. Perhaps I will expand my search. The Boston Police Department has been very gracious in providing C.I.T with a list of their people that could use our help. With all the ugly business involving the mob families in the news this last summer, no doubt one of them may prove to be sufficient.”_

“Uh, what exactly are we here looking for, Deacon?” Piper inquired, her suspicion rising by the moment.

“Next one down, Tom,” he ignored her.

 

_“Personal log of Dr. Johannes Birk, September 27th, 2077_

_Just when I was beginning to worry I would never find one, the ideal candidate has been dropped into my lap! The preliminary meeting with Mister Valentine was extremely intriguing and his health and physical records indicate he should have no trouble with the initial process._

_His superiors left him in a rather awful state and the betrayal and loss the man has experienced have only added to his already unique personality. He reminds me of one of those pulp detectives from the newsstands in his dark hat and brown coat. He has a good eye and a sharp mind, both things that will help him adjust to the remote body._

_I’ve had my secretary put in the call to his office. I have less than a week now to finish the preparations._

_I do hope Mister Valentine can appreciate Mozart. It’s my preferred choice to listen to while working and he and I shall be working together from now on, for a long time.”_

 

No one said anything this time when the recorder stopped. Tom didn’t wait for Deacon to prompt him to click another.

 

_“Personal log of Dr. Johannes Birk, October 4th, 2077._

_Ah! It worked. It was a clever bit of subterfuge if I do say so myself. I was a little worried at first he might not get into the cryostasis pod, he’s a little too clever for his own good, but, in the end, I managed to reassure him it was all part of the process. “All you have to do is sleep.” Haha. Perhaps a poor joke in taste, but it was nonetheless true! He’ll sleep for eternity now and when he wakes up, it will be in a new, improved body._

_Unfortunately, I’m still many years away from perfecting his shell, but the body scan we took on his initial visit will be the canvas I build his form upon. Better to give him a face he’ll recognize to ease the transition. Once I’ve taken the Gen 2’s as far as they’ll go, then the real work begins. A lesser man might scoff at the length of time this experiment will take, but in 40 or 50 years, I’ll be ready to connect Mister Valentine to his new shell and once I’ve proven my theories, then mass production can begin. What will it matter if I’m 28 or 88 once the procedure is perfected? I can freeze myself and start a new life at any age._

_The vital signs and brain activity are well within expected parameters. I’ll let him dream until I’m ready to start his transmissions. I hope he appreciates what a long and wonderful rest he’ll finally have.”_

 

“Jesus, Mary and Josephine,” Cait breathed.

“Just how many logs are there?” Preston leaned over Tom’s shoulder as they scanned the list.

“Over a hundred years worth,” Deacon scowled. “Maybe more.”

“Skip ahead,” Piper whispered.

This time, when Dr. Birk’s voice came over the recording, it was not the clear, meek voice from the earlier tapes. This time, it was rough, rubbed raw and thick and grating.

 

_“Personal log of Dr. Johannes Birk, May 9th, 2197._

_You know, if you’d asked me 100 years ago how I felt about the radiation sickness that turned me into this...this creature, I’d have asked you to put me out of my misery, but now? Now I see the benefit to this evolution._

_I have achieved the same effect for myself that I’d been hoping to discover through the cryostasis. The needs to eat and sleep are now only desires I find myself no longer a slave to. The only thing that matters now, is my work, and this gift, this new life? It grants me the time I need to truly perfect my creation._

_I solved the problem with the sensor net last week and the next time I transfer Mister Valentine to the remote host, he will at long last be able to feel more depth and nuance than some numeric value could ever provide._

_It is unfortunate I’ve had to erase his temporary drives twice now. I feel it is too much time and too little success to let him keep the memories he creates in the remote body yet. He does not need to remember the failures as I have. Eventually, however, I will set the transmitter to allow him to retain these new experiences into his brain and then, he will truly be a unique individual both in his stationary body and this roaming one._

_Off-topic, I’ve begun to receive some type of inquiry from the remnants of the University survivors. They’ve shortened the name at least, The Institute--hah! I’ve been in their systems for years watching their development of the Gen 2’s and it’s embarrassing how small the distance is they’ve managed to come in all this time with their technologies. Now they begin to speak about wanting to bridge the gap between this generation and the next, as if I am interested in their ridiculous ventures._

_I don’t trust them, however. I caught one of their bots sniffing a little too close to the labs for my liking. I’ve changed out the drives in the remote body’s skull and hidden the manual neurotransmitter in case they get any clever ideas about stealing from my work. It will look like I’ve taken from them instead! Ha!”_

 

The silence was thick in the room now. Tom scrolled to the bottom of the list and clicked the last file.

 

_“Personal log of Dr. Johannes Birk, December 20th, 2223_

_I’ve held them off now as long as I could, but I can do no more. They’ll be coming for me soon. I can hear the turrets I’ve set up to stall them firing. It is a bit sad, really. We almost made it to Christmas._

_They’re so close to achieving the Gen 3’s, but my dear Valentine, his roaming unit will push them the rest of the way there. It’s ironic, is it not, that the very cryotech I developed all those years ago would provide the Institute with the pre-war DNA sample they needed to solve the biological component that had held them back for so long._

_I cannot keep them from finding the remote unit. If they find nothing, they will search harder, and if they search harder, they will find Mister Valentine’s static form. This is something that cannot be. For him to continue to live his new life, the original shell must be preserved and hidden away. They do not know of his existence, and if we are lucky, they’ll believe the research left behind. That this unit is merely a copy of a man who once was instead of a body that man can live forever in._

_I do not have the heart to erase his temporary memory again. This last year has been the most successful yet, even if Mister Valentine may disagree with me. He cannot remember all the failures we discovered together. He’ll only know perfection and it’is time to allow those memories to integrate with more permanence._

_Regardless of how it shall end now, I truly believe I gave that man a better life. He survived his trauma. He survived the bombs._

_I hope he can survive the Institute.”_

 

As the last of Dr. Birk’s personal logs came to an end, the holotape Tom had placed in the terminal finished it’s download. The sound of its ejection rang sharp and heavy in the lab room and it sat there for nearly a full minute before Deacon reached over Tom’s shoulder to pull it out.

“Tell me this isn’t true,” Piper murmured, as she turned and leaned heavily against the edge of the console desk. “This shit cannot be true.”

“Piper,” Preston reached for her.

“God, all those years..,” she bent forward against a sudden wave of nausea. “All the shit he had to deal with…who does that to a person and thinks of it as merciful in the end?!”

“It wasn’t all bad,” MacCready said softly. “He found the boss, didn’t he?”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it,” Piper glared at him before turning her fury on Deacon. “You said we were coming here to find another version of Nick. You said that...that thing was transmitting all his data to another body…”

“It wasn’t a lie,” Deacon shook his head. Jesus. He’d figured it’d be bad. But not this. Never this.

Piper snorted.

“Not really the truth either though, right? God...Dammit. I don’t even know what to say.”

“Might be, we should go and say hello,” Cait looked at the door they hadn’t gone through yet. The one that led deeper into the labs.

Preston made the decision for them. He slung his rifle back over his shoulder and took hold of Piper’s hand. 

“We’re still here to save Nick. We finish what we started and anything else...we’ll just have to deal with later.”

Solemnly, the group left the lab, filing through the door one after another and continuing on. Evidence of Dr. Birk’s final message was scattered down the halls. Broken turrets and synth parts littered their path and occasionally one of them stumbled over a loose bolt or discarded ammo pack. Remnants of the people who’d once worked there were left much like everything else after the war; calendars marked birthdays, old photos were taped to workstations long out of use and coats and hats that would likely never be worn again hung where they’d been left. 

They reached a door marked Dr. J.Birk P.H.D. 

Deacon went through first this time. 

They passed his large oak desk, over the red carpet and beyond his many bookshelves into another long corridor. This one contained a floor to ceiling viewing window and inside the space it peered in on, an everyday room lay just inside. A single bed with dusty sheets, a chair, a couch, a radio and a curtain rimmed painted window made to look like a bright sunny day was just outside. A tiny plaque near the end of it still held a name card, though the paper was brittle and yellowed and the pen ink was faded, it was still legible.

_N. Valentine_

Piper looked away and Deacon’s mouth set firm. They passed the last few steps without looking at one another as they came into the main lab. 

The room within was sprawling and had probably once been a great center for science. The computer terminals had been smashed in the attack and papers and debris rested everywhere. In one corner, against a series of metal lockers, a skeleton was propped up and grinning at them, his dirty labcoat and many times repaired trousers a clear indication of how long he’d been there before he’d died. The rifle burn to his gut was fading from the cloth, but still present.

“Here lies Dr. Birk,” Piper came to stand before the skeleton. “Another asshole in a long line of Institute assholes.”

“Good riddance,” MacCready muttered, kicking a chunk of one of the tables out of his way.

“I don’t get it,” Preston said, glancing around. “Where’s the cryotube?”

“Dude did say he’d hidden it,” Tom whispered, sticking close to Deacon.

“So, if I were an old crazy ghoul lookin’ ta hide a big glass box from a buncha robots,” Cait gestured around the remains of the room. “Where would I be stickin’ it?”

Piper looked up from where she stood before the skeleton, her eyes narrowing at the name plates on the lockers. 

_N. Valentine_

“Maybe somewhere really obvious,” She smirked. 

She reached for the handle, letting the door shove Dr. Birk’s remains out of her way and poked through the contents of the locker. A dark wool fedora sat on the top shelf, underneath which lay a wallet, a set of keys, a gold wristwatch that had stopped ticking years ago, a brass badge and an old gun. On the shelf just below it, a familiar set of clothes were all neatly folded and laid atop a pair of smart leather oxfords. Piper pulled all the items out, handing them off to Cait as she searched the rest of the locker. At the very bottom, underneath the lowest shelf, her fingers tripped over a small rubbery button.

She glanced back at the others. 

“Well,” she shrugged. “Here we go. I guess.”

She pressed the button. The sound of gears coming to life and turning in a squeaky grind filled the room. A large panel against the far wall slid open. Lights flickered on, one bulb bursting, so long out of disuse it couldn’t take the sudden fluctuation in power. And there, in the hidden alcove, stood a massive metal tube. The glass window on the front was frosted over, but the shadow in the middle of it all indicated there was something...someone...inside. 

Most all of them had seen something like it before. They’d helped Nora bury the dead from Vault 111 when the war was over and the decision was made to scrap the underground machinery for parts. They’d offered to leave her husband’s tube intact, but she’d shaken her head and buried him beside all the others. 

_“No one gets left underground. Not until we bury them.”_

The majority of the machinery around the tube was flickering but functional, all but one panel near the center of the right side, which sparked and popped every few moments.

“So, how do we do this?” Preston turned to Deacon and Tom. 

“Time to shine, Science-man,” Deacon gave him a helpful shove forward.

“Okay...let’s see if we can’t make a little of the old Tinker Tom magic happen.”

The others waited patiently as Tom carefully examined the machine. Cait was humming quietly. MacCready examining the old pistol from the locker. Deacon lost in his thoughts, Tom’s voice drawing him back occasionally when it filtered through the haze he seemed stuck in. Having worked with Tom for years, Deacon was used to hearing the man talk to himself as he worked, cataloguing everything he took in with short breathy whispers to commit the knowledge to memory. Tom was murmuring to himself now as he turned to the computer console beside the pod and took to the keyboard there.

“What are we going to say to him,” Piper said quietly, sitting in an old lab chair Preston had righted for her. Her Minuteman stood just behind her, hands on her shoulders, his thumbs rubbing her neck in gentle circles. “God, what’s he going to feel like? Did Blue ever say what it felt like?”

“She never spoke about it,” Preston shrugged. “Not with me.”

Piper glanced around the room. MacCready shook his head. Cait shrugged.

“It’s cold,” Deacon said from his place leaning against the lockers, his sunglasses angled towards the floor. “She said it was cold.”

A moment passed. No one spoke.

“Well, at least he won’t be alone when he gets out,” Piper rubbed at her arms and stood up, pacing a few steps forward. 

“We’re all here,” Preston agreed solemnly. “No matter what.”

Tom finally turned to them. 

“All right. Pretty sure I got this bad boy figured out,” he gestured with a thumb towards the tube. “Mad Dr. Birk modded this thing all to hell, but the controls aren’t that much different than what was down in Vault 111.”

He removed a small box from the bag at his hip, carefully discarding the lid and removing the heart shaped neurotransmitter. 

“First, we’re gonna load Lola into the manual data port, like so,” Tom flipped open a panel midway up the right side of the tube and clicked the device into place, before closing it and turning back to the keyboard. “Then we’re gonna let Lola do her sweet thing.”

He clicked the enter key and a loading bar flashed across multiple screens in the alcove. It was a long wait for the bar to finish filling.

“Think he’ll still be any good with a gun?” MacCready sighed. 

“For Nora’s sake, let’s hope so!” Cait waggled her eyebrows at him. MacCready smacked her arm with the back of his hand.

“Inappropriate, Cait,” Piper rolled her eyes.

The data upload completed. 

“All right. All right, everything looks gooood,” Tom was speaking more to himself now as he checked the console again, than to the others. “Time to wake up, Mister Valentine. It’s a whole new world out here.”

The others stood gathered ten feet from the pod. Tom keyed in the release sequence. His hand moved over to the release lever.

And pulled.

The cryo-pod’s outer lighting came on, a yellow light spinning slowly and casting long shadows across the room. Glass began to defog as the tube hissed and sputtered, thick white plumes of freezing cold air pouring out the venting tubes at the floor. The blue light inside the pod changed to white and before the figure inside became clear through the frozen air, the lid of the pod began to hinge open, lifting up and nearly parallel to the ceiling.

The man inside shifted, tried to move his right leg and then crumpled forward tumbling out of the pod.

He landed hard on hands and knees on the old linoleum flooring. His whole body racked with shivers as more white air drifted past him and he coughed hard and deep between gasping breaths. The form fitting black suit he wore was similar to the blue ones that immediately identified a Vaultie, but in place of a number on his back, the old C.I.T logo stood out, bright and white. His whole body leaned closer into the floor for a moment, back arching as he forced more air into his lungs, fighting against the incessant twitching of cold dancing through muscle to bone.

Piper took a step forward, but Preston caught her arm.

“Give him a minute,” his voice was quiet.

MacCready wasn’t as patient.

“Hey Nick, you...you ok there, man?”

One fist suddenly splayed, palm flat, fingers wide on the floor and he pushed himself up, just far enough to raise his head. He looked at them.

Sharp grey eyes glared out from Nick Valentine’s face. He was greying at the temples; his neatly cut brown hair askew from the fall, a few fine, straight pieces fallen forward over his forehead. When he finally spoke, it was in a familiar voice, though the snarl that pulled a cross cryo-pale skin was new.

“What the _hell_ kinda science are you crooks running around here?”


	8. Out with the Old

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dealing with Valentines

“Nick,” Piper shifted on the balls of her feet, unable to decide if she should approach or stay back and give him more time to orient himself. “H-how are you feeling?”

“I’m freezing, thanks,” he growled and got to his knees, immediately swaying as he did so and pressing a hand to his brow. He winced. “Feels like my head’s been through a few rounds with Joe Kelley. Thought you folks were supposed to be curing my trauma, not dishing it out. I told Widmark this was a bad idea…”

Shakily, slowly, he got to his feet, still swaying and shivering, but standing at long last. He blinked the fog from his eyes, taking in the motley crew who currently had him surrounded. These kids were packing some heavy artillery.

“What is all this?” He gestured weakly at them. “Some kind of costume party? Hey, what kind of racket is this place running, anyway? Where’s Doctor Birk?”

The man in the cowboy duster and hat was the first to speak.

“What’s...what’s the last thing you remember?”

“What is this twenty questions?” He rubbed his arms, trying to get them to feel warm again. Nick didn’t feel like he’d ever be warm again. “Just give me my clothes and let me get outta here, I got cases to go over.”

“Hey man,” Deacon stepped in, a false smile immediately on his lips. “Don’t we all. But humor us for a moment. For...uh...science.”

“Didn’t know they let fast boys do labwork these days,” he shook his head at the man with the pompadour and mirrored specs. “You university types certainly take casual to a whole new level.”

“Please,” Deacon’s smile was becoming strained.

“All right, fine. For _science_ ,” he grumbled, his irritation rising as the numbness turned to pain in his fingers. “I got in at ten. Signed a stack of medical paperwork with the old lady at the front desk. Got handed this monkey suit and changed clothes. Doc Birk put me in that damn brain scanner and told me to take a nap. Felt something stick me in the back of my neck...”

One shaking hand rubbed at the back of his skull as he said it, the skin there feeling bruised and tender. He shivered again and sneezed.

“Then I wake up colder than a December day in Chicago and end up biting dirt in front of you fine people,” he took a few pacing steps to the side as he rubbed at his arms. He’d finally noticed the room. “... Say, what the hell happened in here? This place is in shambles.”

“Tom!” The dame in the red coat suddenly yelled, a crazy mix of anger and desperation in her eyes.

“Don’t look at me, man!” The oddest looking fella with enough goofy hardware on him to start a store was holding up his arms in protest. “Lola did her thing! The upload completed!”

“Then how come he’s talkin’ looney?” The mean looking red-head gestured at him.

“It didn’t work, something didn’t work,” the first girl looked like she was about to pop a gasket.

Another sneeze and his body was dancing with the cold all over again. He’d had enough.

“Look, somebody better start talking here,” he paused in his pacing. “I want some answers and don’t feed me any cock and bull story about this being for science. Doesn’t take a detective to know things aren’t on the up and up right now.”

The group looked as guilty as a hung jury.

“The truth,” Mister Pompadour started talking now. “Is that you’ve been in kind of...an accident.”

“Yeah, feed me another one, pal.”

“It’s not a lie,” the dark haired girl said quietly. “You’ve been sleeping Nick. For a really, really long time.”

“We came here to save you,” Cowboy added.

“Well, thanks for that,” Nick frowned, taken back by the heavy air now permeating the room. He was still feeling churlish from the cold, though. “Still doesn’t explain what’s going on right now. Who are you people anyway?”

That. That was the wrong question to ask. Their reactions were immediate. Most of them took a sudden interest in the floor. The woman in the red coat turned away with a grimace. Mister Pompadour frowned. The kind of frown someone makes when you’re standing on their front porch, speaking through a screen door, and leading with “I’m sorry for your loss…”

“We..,” Mister Pompadour was struggling to put back on his face now. Nick had to give him credit, it was a pretty good mask when it slid on. “We’re with an organization called the Railroad.”

He leaned back against the edge of a still standing table.

“We help people. People like you,” he sighed. “Look, Mister Valentine, you might want to sit down. There’s a lot we need to talk about and it’s not gonna be an easy conversation.” 

“All right,” Nick said after a moment. “Flip some of those chairs over. We’ll talk. And then I want my goddamned clothes back.”

Whatever Nick had been expecting them to say, what ended up coming out wasn’t it. He sat with them in a fractured circle of ratty chairs and broken desks; listening. Mister Pompadour...Deacon, they called him...did most of the talking. The others joined in as the hours grew long, all the while the odd man, Tom, fiddled with the damn sleep pod he’d apparently spent the last 200 years cat napping in. 

They told him about the war. About the bombs. They talked about crazy shit that sounded like it’d come straight out of comic book: of super-mutants and raiders and ghouls and a city in ruins. At first, Nick didn’t believe it, but as time went on, it seemed less and less like a joke. It’d be a pretty elaborate prank to waste on an old cop, what with the pieces of robots littering the floor and the skeleton slumped over wearing Doctor Birk’s lab coat.

He’d made the mistake of asking why they’d taken the trouble to dig him out of the cold. Couldn’t figure what they’d need a detective who’d spent the last 200 years on ice for and the “out of the goodness of their hearts” angle didn’t play well for him. 

They were reluctant to start that story with him here, in the lab. Something about it being complicated. Something about his memories being out of whack. Whatever it was, it made the girl in the red coat, Piper, a hot moment away from breaking out into tears and the kid with the bad teeth angry. They promised they’d fill him on the whole thing later and honestly, it was enough for now to hear he’d slept through the end of the world.

One problem at a time.

They’d given him back his clothes after that and busied themselves sorting through the room for God knew what while he dressed. If he still doubted he’d been asleep for more than a few hours, the creases in his clothing he’d left folded were backing up their claim. It’d take one hell of a talented Mr. Handy to get those wrinkles out. Nick frowned as his fingers worked the silk of his tie in practiced precision. He’d always taken pride in the idea of dressing for his job. Even in the worst of his firefights, he’d never looked so rumpled. 

As he slid into his trench coat, however, some of his old confidence came back. It was a piece of familiar armor for him and if all this wasn’t some dream cooked up in his skull from another night bathing his thoughts out with whiskey, then he could use a bit familiarity right now. He smoothed his hair back, his reflection in the old cracked mirror still looking cold and a bit haggard, before placing the dark fedora on his head. Out of habit, he snapped the brass badge to the leather of his belt, slid the gold watch his department in Chicago had given him before he’d been transferred to Boston on his wrist and stopped just shy of winding it. 

He had no idea what the _time_ was.

And for some reason, that _really_ bothered him.

Across the length of the room where Nick Valentine was putting himself back together, Deacon stood with Tinker Tom. He’d spent the last few hours examining the machine, inside and out, while they’d played catch up with the detective. He looked at Deacon now, the look on his face an unhappy one.

“Whatcha got for me, Tom?”

“The problem’s not with Lola,” he started, holding up the heart shaped neurotransmitter. “The upload definitely took and there’s no sign of data corruption. This here, however, is not something we were expecting.”

Tom pointed to the interior of the cryo-pod. The inside was cushioned in leather, a morbidly comfortable standing chair, made for a lifetime in eternity. He lifted the headpiece and a four pronged metal device slid out, the tips of the needles it carried still red with Valentine’s blood.

“I don’t think crazy Doctor Birk actually implanted anything in Nick’s head,” Tom huffed. “This whole machine? It’s the implant.”

“And when we broke the seal, we snapped the connection,” Deacon sighed, following his trail of thought. “So we can’t use Lola again to jumpstart his memories.”

“Here’s the thing,” Tom was getting jittery now. “Amari would be the one to know for sure, she’s the brain doctor, but Lola did what Lola’s supposed to do. I don’t know why the memories from his remote body aren’t all up and running yet, but he’s got them. Maybe he’s just a bit scrambled right now. I don’t know.”

“We’ve hit a dead end here, either way,” Deacon helped Tom step down from the pod. “Best case scenario? We bring him to Amari with the information we snagged off that terminal and let her sort it out.”

“What happens if she can’t?”

“We’re not gonna talk about that,” Deacon fingered the silver ring in his pocket. It felt heavy against his skin. “Ever.”

He joined the others as Nick finished dressing and was struck with the sudden eeriness of it all. The synth version might have been the remote body, but this one felt like a copy gone wrong. Two hands, all his skin, no glowing eyes and that hair. There was a wrongness to it, even as Deacon knew this Nick and the other one had never really been separate people, just one guy split between two bodies.

What a fucking mess.

“Hey, careful with that, kid,” Valentine was looking at MacCready now as he reassembled Nick’s old gun. He felt foolish even as he said it. The rifle on the kid’s back packed a hell of a bigger punch that his regulation pea shooter and by the callouses thick on his fingers, it wasn’t a show piece.

MacCready snapped the last piece into place, spinning it once for good measure like the cowboys in the old comics.

“It needs to be cleaned,” he turned it over in his hand, admiring the weight. “Not gonna get much use out of it until then.” 

“You expecting we’ll need to?” Valentine raised a brow at that as MacCready tucked the pistol into his own belt for safe keeping.

“We might,” Preston held out a doozy of a hand cannon towards him. “Here, we brought this along just in case.”

“You could take a man’s head off with this,” Nick took the gun. Despite his initial misgivings, it felt good in his hand. Right somehow. Probably had to do with the balance. Whoever made it certainly knew what they were doing. He slid it into his shoulder holster without much trouble, big as it seemed. “So, you broke me out, now what’s the plan?”

“Now,” Deacon said. “We head back to HQ. It’s safe there and it’ll give us the time to get you adjusted to...uh...everything actually.

“Well, you haven’t put a slug in my back yet,” Nick shrugged. Better to stick with the devil he knew for now. “Should we get a move on?”

For a moment, the group stood there, gaping at him like he’d sprouted wings.

“Something I said?” He cocked a brow.

“Told you,” Tom thumbed the strap of his overalls with pride. “Lola _did_ her sweet thing.”

“Who’s Lola?” Nick asked. He was beginning to question the sanity of these people again.

“Tom’s latest gal pal,” Deacon chuckled. “Come on, let’s try the front door this time. It’s been a long day and I don’t think I’m down for another climb up the service ladder.”

The group filtered back out through Dr. Birk’s office, Nick’s sharp gaze taking everything in. Whatever was going through his mind as they came out into the C.I.T Neurotech department’s main hallway, he kept it to himself. It was a short trip through the corridors to the door that lead to the department’s welcome center, but when they got to it, it’d been barricaded with filing cabinets, desks and a long table. 

“That’s never a good sign,” MacCready said, frowning as Preston began moving one of the desks.

“You rather go back and take that ladder again?” Cait started for the long table. “‘Cause I? I ain’t lookin’ forward to another ten minute climb after all this shite.”

MacCready helped her with the table. 

Piper pulled Nick aside as the furniture was slowly cleared away. Nick watched the others with interest. Most of them seemed suddenly resigned to whatever was on the other side of that door. Tom, on the other hand, was shaking like a leaf and muttering calming words to himself.

“Hey,” she started, leaning in close. He could feel her fingers grow tense on his arm, through the material of his trench coat. “This might not be anything to worry about, but if anything say...jumps out at us in there, just stick behind me and Preston.”

“What sort of something are we talking about here?” He questioned her. He wondered what in the world could have them so spooked.

“Something not good,” she wasn’t looking at him anymore. The door had been cleared. 

Tom cracked three more of his plastic glow sticks. Preston took one. Deacon and MacCready took the others.

“J-j-just in case, y-you know?” He laughed. He laughed like a man ready to cry.

“We go in slow and quiet,” Preston retook point. “MacCready and Deacon you bring up the rear. Cait, Piper, watch our sides. Nothing gets through to Nick or Tom.”

Nick wasn’t keen on finding out what was on the other side of the door anymore.

Preston nodded and slowly pushed the door open. The room beyond was dark, not the pitch black of a starless night, but the kind you imagine in a house that’s been shut up for a long while. Streams of afternoon sunlight filtered in through broken windows high in the vast entryway, providing some illumination through the grey shadows. Furniture was torn up and upended throughout. It stank of mildew and something sickly sweet.

Nick didn’t see anyone. Maybe they _were_ all bonkers.

Preston held his rifle high and took small careful steps forward. The girls followed. No one breathed. 

And then, something growled.

The whole room seemed to come alive at once, shadows slithering out from under broken desks, from behind the old vending machines, from where they’d been lying prone on the floor; waiting.

“Ferals!” MacCready yelled and shot clean through the group, taking out the first one that had made to leap at Preston. It’s head exploded from the slug. The kid was good. That shot was one in a million.

“Stick together!” Preston cried above his rifle firing, the red laser lighting the room and revealing the huge nest of feral ghouls they’d stumbled into with each blast.

Nick could feel his heart racing and for a moment, the fear that gripped him hard in the belly almost sent him to the floor. He’d never seen a monster before. Not one that hadn’t been in a movie or hiding under a person’s skin. These things weren’t like anything he could even begin to imagine. They were so much worse. 

Tom was a nervous mess beside him and as the others kept the shambling masses of flesh at bay, Nick drew the pistol from his holster. Okay, so there were monsters. Just meant he wouldn’t have to file any paper work and sit through a psych eval after they were done.

He watched Cait bash the skull in of one with what looked like a tire iron with a blade taped to it, before she ripped her weapon from its flesh and tore into a second one. Behind him, he could hear Piper’s little gun rapidly discharging. Deacon had dropped out of view, but the numbers on his side were contained. Whatever he was doing it was working. MacCready stood planted in the back, picking them off calmly, like he was shooting cans out on a fence.

He stopped to reload, shifting one foot back as he went to cock the rifle and catching his heel hard on on empty glass cola bottle. His weight shifted and he tumbled back, just as one of the creatures climbed out from behind a water-stained couch and towered over him. The calm that had been there a moment ago immediately fled and his fingers fumbled for the rifle as terror took him. 

Nick’s shot rang loud and solid, even amidst the sounds of weaponry being fired all around him. The slug hit clean through the center of the ghoul’s brow, snapping its head back and sending it sprawling. MacCready watched it as sense flooded back into his veins. He felt a hand grip his elbow.

“You alright, kid?”

Nick was beside him on one knee, already helping him back to his feet before MacCready even registered he was standing again. 

“Y-yeah, thanks,” he managed to get out.

“You worry about those long shots,” the detective pressed his back to the sniper’s. “I’ll keep the rest off ya!”

MacCready cocked his rifle and took aim. He could feel the shots from the pistol before Valentine had ever pulled the trigger. That was one thing they wouldn’t have to worry about, at least. He was still as good as he’d ever been with a gun.

For a moment, the thought crossed MacCready’s mind that Nick might never get his memory back. That he might never remember MacCready had once run with the Gunners and that the two of them had never been friends. He didn’t like the thought of that. It was easier to think of him as a do-gooder robot with a stick up his butt and the girl Mac had once mooned over at his hip, than this. The man at his back didn’t know him from Adam and he hadn’t hesitated to step into MacCready’s shadow to allow him some breathing room. The man at his back didn’t know a damn thing about the ferals or the overwhelming fear that always washed over MacCready when they rushed him. The man at his back had just known MacCready needed help.

MacCready pulled the trigger. Another ghoul when flying; dead. He hoped Nick would get his memories back somehow. He hated this version more than the last one. He reminded MacCready too much of Nora.

Despite the bodies they were piling on the floor, the nest of ferals seemed unending and adrenalin was quickly fading into something more like fear for the group as more ghouls crawled in from a door behind the welcome desk. Somewhere outside, voices could be heard shouting. The sound of wood cracking soon followed it. And then the front doors of the facility burst open, Minutemen pouring in, rifles raised and shooting. 

Nick had nearly spent his bullets when the cavalry arrived, guns blazing. The strange men and women helped surround the small group and together, they finally got the room to stop moving. He breathed a sigh of relief and turned to check on the kid at his back when the biggest damn zombie of them all stood before him. Nick took aim and MacCready reacted before the shot made it out of the gun, tipping Nick’s arm up and sending the bullet high into the roof.

“Whoa, whoa,” he shouted. “Not that one!”

Nick was genuinely confused as MacCready eased the empty pistol from his hands and Deacon strolled up to the monstrous looking man in the long blue duster he’d nearly shot. 

“Sorry, General,” Deacon shrugged in apology. “It’s dark in here and you cut an imposing figure. Honest mistake.”

“No harm done,” the General grunted. “You were in here a long time. Started to get worried when we got reports from shooting coming from this side of the building. Hell of a thing, walking out of a feral nest this deep.”

“We appreciate the assist,” Deacon nodded.

“Good to see you up and about,” the ghoul turned to Nick then. “You look different.”

“Bit of a downgrade, really,” Deacon was talking fast and free now. He wasn’t sure how Nick would respond to Edward Deegan at the moment. “Some of the wiring is a bit screwy yet, but we’ll sort him out.”

Deegan held a hand out to Nick.

“Glad things are working out for you then. I was sorry to hear what happened with you and Nora. Didn’t doubt you’d make it through, though.”

Nick had no idea what the man was talking about and wasn’t sure if he was more uncomfortable with the mottled hand that still extended towards him or the fact that this...ghoul...acted like they were old pals. He looked up at the milky blue eyes tinged with red that stared down at him and made a decision.

“Thanks,” he said, hesitating only a moment before taking the man’s hand. The texture was odd and slightly waxy, but otherwise, just a hand. “Sorry for almost taking your head off there. Got a little caught up in all the rush.”

“You’re a good man, Valentine,” Deegan snorted. “I wasn’t worried.”

He turned back and walked over to Preston then, leaving Nick alone with his thoughts. He was beginning to think maybe he ought to have asked more questions back in that lab.

“Road’s clear from here,” the General clasped Preston on the shoulder. “Should be smooth sailing for you all the way back.”

“Thank you again, General,” Preston nodded. “We’re in your debt.”

“Nonsense,” he shook his head, slinging his shotgun over a shoulder. “I owe that woman more than clearing a path for some of her friends will ever cover. When she’s up on her feet again, tell her to stop by the Castle sometime. I’ve got a bottle of good bourbon with her name on it. Been too long since we’ve had a drink to living after almost dying.”

They didn’t linger long in the feral covered room, the Minutemen and Railroad group alike sauntering gratefully back out into the afternoon sun. As Nick stepped out into the world for the first time, he felt his heart sink. The air outside was clean if not a little acrid and the breeze was just warm enough to be comfortable, but the buildings were in ruins all around him and in the distance he could see the remains of the city he’d once lived in, hardly recognizable in the current state it was in. 

They hadn’t been lying to him.

He’d slept through the end of the world.

His hands slid into his pockets and he tilted his head back, grey eyes fixed toward the heavens.

At least the skies were still blue.


	9. A Truth Not Wanted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Railroad group heads back to HQ and Nick meets Doctor Amari.

It was a long walk back to HQ.

Nick stayed silent for the majority of it, only speaking to answer questions the others occasionally directed at him. For the most part, they left him alone to his thoughts as they made their way through the rubble strewn streets of the Commonwealth. 

Every once in awhile, they’d saunter by a building or a crumbling landmark Nick would recognize. He’d covered quite a bit of Boston in his time with the police department there and even in the ruins, he could spot familiar places he’d once sat drinking coffee or buying the paper. There were other places they passed, however, places he didn’t recall ever seeing; an alleyway here, a trolley car on it’s side there, and he would have sworn he’d been by them before.

He supposed it was just the memory of what the city had been like before the war, fighting with the wreckage he was walking through with strangers now. They were an odd group of people to be taking a stroll with. An odd group of people to put your life, such as it was now, in their care. But odd as they were, they seemed genuine enough in their intentions. And even if Deacon was the biggest liar that Nick had ever met and MacCready’s angry scowls towards him an act he was having trouble maintaining, he felt safer with them than without right now.

For all they ribbed at once another, they were a tight knit group and he imagined they’d known each other for quite some time. Nick had never been what some people might call social. It wasn’t that he was against the idea of things like friends. Just wasn’t something that he encountered too often. He’d been the kind of guy that socialized from a distance. He had a lot of acquaintances across the states and a couple of fellas he worked with that might address him now and then as pal. And the people at the coffee shop knew him by name. Point being: he didn’t have the kinda relationships these people seemed to. He just wasn’t that kinda guy.

He was friendly enough he supposed and he could turn on the charm when he needed to, but outside of work, he read and smoked and occasionally went down to the corner bar for a drink. Didn’t help matters that he had a sharp tongue and a sarcastic sense of when to use it. Why a girl like Jenny had ever bothered with him, he’d never know. 

The sting was less these days, but not so much he liked to think on it. It’d been his fault she’d gotten killed. He’d been too damned interested in the Winter case, still flying high from his work taking down the mobs in Chicago. He should have known Boston was a different city. They played by different rules than he’d been used to.

It burned him that the D.A. had let a guy like Eddie Winter turn state’s evidence. It burned him that he’d never have to pay for the lives he took under the guise of working for the feds. It burned him that he’d let his fiance become another body Winter’s had put down in the streets without penalty.

The guilt ate away at him. He should have told her not to follow him. Shouldn’t have let her take that apartment in South Boston in the hopes he’d find time to spend with her between cases. She’d have been safer in Chicago. She loved it in Chicago. Her entire life had been there.

He’d been crazy to ask her to marry him in the first place. A sweet girl like that and a cop married to his work like him had been a recipe for disaster. She trusted too easily and he didn’t trust enough. Maybe that’s why they’d never moved in together. He could have pressed the issue. Hell, he knew she wanted him to press the issue. But, he hadn’t. 

Jenny loved the idea that he was some kind of secret Don Juan, and Nick liked keeping up that appearance. He liked to think he could be that kinda guy. She found him exciting. Different from the fellas she was used to.

He almost hadn’t talked to her that first night, had almost talked himself out of walking up to her with a “Come here often?”, but she didn’t know him and he didn’t know her and it was easier to gamble with your heart when things started between strangers. He laid it on thick and by the end of the night, he had her number and a promise to meet for dinner on Friday. The way she always told it, he’d walked into that bar like he’d been waiting for her his whole life. Like some kinda destiny. Fated hearts and all that jazz.

He didn’t dare tell her the truth.

That being, the smooth guy that picked her up in Larry’s down on fourth street had been following a lead and had decided to play the numbers when he’d run into a pretty girl with long blond hair and blue eyes, instead.

No. No, not _blue_. 

Green.

Jenny’s eyes were _green_. How could he forget that?

She’d been so sweet on him since that first night at the bar and so innocent, he’d kept things light between them, mostly out of fear of mucking things up. Their romance was like something out of a Hollywood picture; dates at the cafe, dinner at a restaurant, and a walk home through the park where they ended things with a kiss and a goodnight and a “See you tomorrow”, before he went his way and she went hers. It was a far cry from the dark nights he spent working the streets, chasing down leads and taking out mobsters. It was a far cry from the sordid things the boys down at the station assumed he got up to with a pretty girl like that on his arm. He just looked the type, he supposed.

But it was nice. Different from the rest of his life.

He kinda liked that.

Her family had been one of money and her father was adamant if she were going to waste her life on a cop, they were at least going to do things right. Everything had to be on the up and up. The social pages went crazy for it. Society dame and the detective that loved her: A real romance for the modern age. They made their appearances at the right restaurants, he accompanied her to the orchestra, and generally, nothing really changed in their routine, except on occasion he’d had to rent a tux.

Almost a year in and her father called Nick for a chat. People in their kinda circles didn’t dally around when they found gold in the world. Otherwise, it gave other people the idea the gold might somehow be brass. He asked pointed questions about their plans for the future. Nick got the picture.

He’d bought a small diamond and then let her plan. Plan the wedding they’d have, plan the house they’d buy, plan the life they’d live when they got there. He’d lie awake at night, alone, in his tiny apartment with the bay window down near the water and think about the life he’d have soon. It’d be different than what he was used to, but it made her happy and that made him happy. He hadn’t kept delaying the date for lack of love, but he’d always had a fear in the back of his mind that when she saw him, really saw all of him, she’d regret saying yes to a man who thought spending Sunday mornings reading with a smoke and a glass of rye in that big bay window was a good way to pass the time. 

She’d deserved better than a man like that. All he’d gotten her in the end was a bullet in the back on the streets of a city she wasn’t in love with. She should have stayed in Chicago.

At least Eddie Winter was now in the ground with her. Nick doubted that murderer had managed a 200 year cat nap and while it burned him that he’d probably never know how the man had finally died, he at least had the satisfaction that the when was probably when the bombs fell.

Jesus, what had they done to the world.

“Nick!”

“Sorry, what?” He looked up suddenly, nearly running straight into Piper. 

“We’re here,” she motioned to the Old North Church behind her. The others stood scattered on the steps, watching him. “You okay?”

“I’m fine, Doll,” he nodded and put on his best grin. He didn’t want them thinking he’d been losing it back there. “Just wasn’t expecting to walk halfway across Boston tonight and these legs are 200 years out of warranty according to you folks.”

“Sorry about that,” and she honestly seemed to be. “Come on. We’ll get in and sit down for a bit.”

“Don’t suppose we could grab a cup of coffee on they way?” he rubbed at the ache in his neck as they took the stairs.

“What is it with all the Pre-War people and coffee?” MacCready wondered from up ahead. The others laughed.

“I take it a good cup of joe is hard to find around here,” Nick frowned at that thought. “By the way you’re laughing.”

“Sorry, it’s just...just, that was the first thing she asked about, too,” Piper snorted, trying to keep her composure. “God, I thought she’d murder someone when we didn’t have any. Not to worry though, dunno how she did it, but Blue has some sort of secret supply back in Diamond City. Real black market stuff.”

“Blue?”

Piper stopped walking, Deacon was glaring at them. It was obvious even behind the sunglasses.

“No one! Nothing. I didn’t say anything. Heeey look at that, Preston needs me,” Piper squeaked and danced ahead. She caught Preston’s arm and ignored the chastising looks both Cait and MacCready shot her.

Nick sighed.

One problem at a time.

They led him through the rubble of the church, passing the old pews covered in thick layers of dirt and glass. He doubted anyone had bothered praying here in quite some time. The sermons would be a whole lot shorter now, at any rate. Little hard to frighten the parishioners with the End Times once they’d already happened.

A crude chalk drawing of a lantern marked their path and he followed them through dark corridors down into what he was fairly certain was an old crypt if the skeletons hanging around were any indication. A thin layer of water lay stagnant over the stone floor and he cringed as he felt it slosh against the ends of his trousers and seeped into his shoes. He could understand now why their clothing looked the way it did if this was everyday living now.

They stopped before a large brass dial, some sort of cleverly keyed lock by the way Deacon spun it with every press of a letter. The man might have been a liar, but one truth Nick would bet the farm on is that Deacon could do that dial blindfolded, with one hand tied behind his back. He’d have to keep a closer eye on that one. More to him than what he let on.

As they filed through the wall that opened, Nick took it all in stride. Secret walls, 200 year gaps in time, monsters that seemed to crawl up through the floor...he doubted anything could surprise him about the world now.

Deacon casually dropped back to walk with Nick, letting the others go ahead.

“So, down this next set of stairs is HQ,” he explained as they walked. He was preparing him for something. “The organization has grown pretty rapidly the last few years and we’ve had a lot of new recruits, so don’t be surprised if the place is a little…”

They crested the entry into HQ together, the warm light of the large room a welcome change from the dark crypt. With the exception of a sturdy looking woman with red hair standing behind a large table at the back and a kid with the same hair color drawing on an old folder behind her, no one else was there.

“...empty,” Deacon finished, coughing to cover his surprise. “Don’t be surprised if it’s completely empty.”

“Deacon,” the woman stalked around the table towards them, a cigarette waving in her hand. There was a dangerous look to the dame and the way she held her smoke made Nick think she’d been doing it since she’d come into the world. “Welcome back. I’ve sent all non-essential personnel to the Mercer and Madison houses for now.”

“Mister Valentine, this is Desdemona, leader of the Railroad,” he said quickly. “Dez, this is Mister Valentine, our _new_ friend.”

Nick didn’t miss the quizzical twitch of her brow when Deacon had introduced him to her. She wasn’t expecting that. It was the same kinda look that ghoul in the blue duster had given him, when he’d hesitated before shaking hands.

“Nice to make your acquaintance,” Nick tipped his hat politely.

“Welcome to the Railroad, Mister Valentine,” Her eyes narrowed as she looked at Nick now, searching for something. When she didn’t find she turned to address Deacon. “Was the mission successful?”

“More or less,” Deacon shrugged, his fingers fiddling with something in his jeans pocket. A coin, maybe? Or a bottle cap. “Nothing good ol’ Doctor Amari can’t fix.”

“I hope you’re right about that,” Desdemona’s disapproval was focused on Deacon now. “The sooner she sees him, the better.”

“Hey now, I’m through with Doctors,” Nick’s observations of the pair came to a halt when he realized what they were talking about. “Didn’t work out so well for me last time around.”

“Nah, I promise you’ll like this one,” Deacon slipped an arm around Nick’s shoulders, leading him towards P.A.M’s room. “Trust me. You guys are practically friends already.”

Nick grunted at that. As Deacon led him toward the doorway Tom had disappeared into, he watched the others they’d come back with slipping between two heavy plastic curtains on the other side of the room. The plastic was such that you couldn’t make out more than blurry shapes and a few blotchy colors on the other side. 

“Where are they off to in such a hurry?”

“We’ve got another friend visiting right now,” Deacon’s tone was light, but there was an edge to it. “But, she’s not feeling so well at the moment.”

Huh. It wasn’t the whole truth, but it also wasn’t a lie.

“I’m, ah, sorry to hear it,” Nick offered in condolence. “Hope she makes a full recovery soon.”

“Yeah, me too,” Deacon smiled at him. Lotta pain in that smile.

Nick let it drop and allowed himself to be shown into what could only be described as a science club room. Machines and computers covered every wall, lights blinking and screens filtering with information faster than a person could read. Hell, there was even a robot standing smack in the middle of the room, over what looked to be a hastily covered body. That was disconcerting.

He recognized Tom, but three new sets of eyes were now staring at him. One of the women, a middle aged gal with severely tied back dark hair started to tear up. Once again, Deacon was fast on his feet with the introductions. Too fast. He was trying to keep people quiet.

“Hey kids, we brought a friend home from our trip,” he clapped his hands together. “Everybody, say hello to Mister Valentine. Mister Valentine, this is Science Team Omega Sunday.”

“It’s a pleasure,” Nick nodded, sliding his hands into the trench coat pockets. This routine was wearing thin, quick.

“I told them about Lola,” Tom broke the silence. “But just the quick version.”

“Great, good, so we’re all on the same page,” Deacon’s hand was on Nick’s back again and he ushered him over to the woman who still had glass in her eyes. “This lovely creature, is Doctor Amari. She’s our brain woman.”

“It’s very nice to see you again, Mister Valentine,” she shook his hand, with a soft and feminine hand.

“Yeah, I’d like some clarification on that if you don’t mind,” Nick shifted his weight, trying not to side-eye the sheet on the table. “Not that I’m not grateful for the jailbreak, but people are being awful quiet about the hows and why for it. Met a couple of faces I’ve never seen before that seem familiar with mine.”

“You have no memory after the war?” Amari asked gently. As much as he wasn’t fond of Doctors at the present, he liked her voice. It was the kind of voice a kid wishes his mother had.

“I’ve got nothing after they shoved me in that cooler,” he said bluntly. “How could I?”

“That is something we’ll need to talk about,” her mouth drew into a thin line.

“I’ve got nothing but time now,” Nick shrugged. “Don’t imagine I’ve gotta worry about getting to the station anytime soon.”

“That’s true,” she was amused by him. Fantastic. “I will answer all your questions, but first, if you’ll allow it, I’d like to do a small examination. You were in cryo-sleep for an extremely long time and it would be useful to get a reading of your brain activity. It will help us to understand what’s happened to you.”

“You’re not loading me up into anything,” Nick stated firmly.

“Not at all,” she moved a small wooden chair for him and invited him to sit. “You will be conscious and in this chair the whole time, I promise.”

Nick eyed the chair and considered how badly he wanted answers. He sat-- though he could already feel his heart beginning to race. 

“Fool me twice,” he grumbled.

“Want me to hold your hand?” Deacon offered.

“Keep it,” Nick snorted and crossed his arms. “I’ll be fine.”

Amari approached him with a small series of wires with plastic leads at one end. The other end was attached to one of the computer terminals. Didn’t look fancy enough to put him out for another 200 years, but then again, maybe the technology had gotten smaller over the centuries.

“You deal with a lot of cryo-cases here, Doc?” He made small talk as she stuck the leads at his temples. Christ, what a stupid thing to be nervous about.

“Only one other,” she said without expounding upon it.

“Yeah? How’d he turn out?”

“She turned out to be one of the greatest women I’ve ever known,” Amari finished with the leads and turned back to her computer to start the scan.

“High praise,” Nick snorted. “She some sort of scientist, too?”

“No, not at all,” Amari told him bluntly. “She’s in your line of work these days.”

“A detective?” He seemed honestly taken aback by that. “Didn’t think there’d be much use for many of those in this world.”

“You’d be surprised,” Amari hummed as she read through the data.

“Maybe I’ll look her up when things get settled down again,” he said in all seriousness, strangely happy at the notion he might not be as alone here as he’d thought. “Think she’d help a fellow detective find his footing in this strange new world?”

“You can ask her yourself when she wakes up,” Amari typed something into the console and the scan stopped. “She’s in the room on the far side of headquarters right now.”

“Amari,” Deacon cautioned.

“There’s no harm in him knowing that, Deacon,” Amari scolded, gracing Nick with a small smile. “She’s not in any shape to speak at the moment, however. You’ll have to be patient.”

Nick’s eyes widened beneath his fedora. The woman in the other room. The one that Deacon had been worried about. Odd sort of coincidence to have two cryo-cases under the same roof. Bigger coincidence they both happened to be detectives. 

“This woman the same ‘Blue’ that Piper mentioned?” He tried casually.

“That _is_ what Piper calls her, yes,” Amari gave him a knowing smile. “The examination is over, by the way.”

“How’d I do, Doc?” He grinned as she removed the leads. 

“Quite admirably for a man who slept for 200 years,” she placed them out of the way and took up a pencil and notebook.

“So this detective in the other room,” he steered the conversation back. “Piper calls her Blue. What d’you call her?”

“Charmer,” Deacon said.

“Nora,” Amari smiled.

 _Nora._ Huh. He liked the way that sounded. Short and sweet.

“A woman of many names, apparently,” Nick chuckled. “Can’t wait to meet her. Hope she can stand my company.”

“I don’t doubt you’ll hit it off,” Amari leaned against her desk. “She’s your partner.”

Nick blanched.

Funny joke for such a serious face.

“You want to run that one by me again?” Nick said pointedly.

Doctor Amari pulled out a chair for herself.

“We’re going to have a very long talk, you and I,” Amari stated, a gentleness in her manner meant to calm him. “It’s not going to be pleasant to hear, but I promise you, it is the truth.”

“Been having a lot of those today,” he shook his head. All right, time for problem number two. “ Just lay it on me, Doc, and don’t spare the gory details.”

It was many hours later, in the early hours of the morning, that Nick sat alone in that room, staring at the body of his own corpse.

No, his _remote_ body, not a corpse.

The body his mind had spent a great deal of time living in out in this strange new world. The body that had once held the memories he’d somehow forgotten. 

Amari hadn’t gone easy on him and in an odd way, he was grateful for that. Better to have all the evidence on the table before you started putting together the pieces. Even with her explanations, he’d never have believed it if he hadn’t heard the tape. He’d spent most of the evening and a greater part of the night listening to Dr. Birk’s personal logs. A mind split between two bodies. One trapped in ice and the other a mechanical man who didn’t know he was really a human after all. It’d be funny story if it hadn’t been his life.

He’d been sitting there staring at the other him for hours now. The resemblance was uncanny, if not a little unsettling. He tried hard to imagine what it had been like living in that body; what he’d done, what he’d felt...what kind of life he’d been living. To hear Amari tell it, he’d continued with detective work in some place called Diamond City. It was a small comfort to know that he’d still been him in that other body, even if he couldn’t remember it.

Tom’s gal, Lola, had turned out to be some sort of memory chip. When they’d pulled him out of that tube, they thought he’d come out with all his memories intact. Made sense why they’d looked at him so strangely at the time. Those people were supposedly his friends. Not just people _he_ knew, but people who _knew_ him. And he couldn’t remember a damn one of them.

And then there was the matter of his partner. _Nora._ The woman sleeping in the far room.

They were sparse on the details with her. They owned a small detective agency in Diamond City together. He’d been one of the first people she met when she’d come out of cryo-sleep, another survivor who’d slept through the bombs and woken up 200 years later. Her circumstances hadn’t been the same as his. She’d been in some sort of Vault and from the sounds of it, she hadn’t volunteered to be a popsicle either.

He had a sudden need to speak with her and a head full of questions about waking up in this new Commonwealth he hoped she wouldn’t laugh at. He wondered if she’d ever felt the way he did now, so utterly and completely lost and alone. At least he’d have her to help him. He hoped he’d helped her in a similar manner in that other body. He wished he could remember it.

They wouldn’t tell him anything about her condition. Just that she wasn’t well and he’d be able to speak with her when she was up and about again in a couple of days. Didn’t take a detective to figure out some of what had happened, though. The gaping wound to the gut that had left his other body inactive and had forced them to come dig him out of the ground was a pretty big clue. They’d told him someone had attacked them; him in his other body and this Nora he’d been partnered with. They’d won the battle, apparently, but looking at the mechanical him on the table and the wounds he’d sustained, Nick didn’t feel it was much of a victory. 

If he’d come out of it as he had, Nick imagined Nora might be in bad shape. That thought really _bothered_ him.

And by the look on Deacon’s face when her name was brought up, he didn’t doubt the truth in it. He sincerely hoped she’d live, that woman in the other room. He had so many questions for her.

For one, he wanted to know how they’d gotten hooked together in the first place. He’d never had a partner before, not really. He’d always been the kind of guy that worked a case alone, even when he was assigned to a team. He couldn’t imagine what’d it be like to have someone watching your back like that all the time. Having someone like that you could trust.

He wondered what kind of woman she was and why the hell she wanted to hang around with a...a robotic man all the time. Maybe that’s just what people did nowadays, but she had an awful lot of human friends here. What had made him worth teaming up with, especially in that body?

He wished he could remember.

Amari assured him there was nothing wrong with his brain. Tom’s little drive had uploaded the memories into his head just fine, he just couldn’t access them. She thought it might have something to do with the way he’d woken up. Something about the shock and trauma of the experience blocking out the new memories. She told him to give it time. That the memories from his the other body would come back to him once this body had adjusted to this new world and his brain started sorting out the files. 

His robot body lay dead on the table in front of him and she still spoke about him like he was some kind of damned computer. 

He didn’t want to wait for someday to come, however. He wanted his memories back now. Right now. If he’d really lived here, in this world, in this other body, and he had memories to match, maybe then he wouldn’t feel like such an outsider. He could greet the people sleeping in the other room as old friends rather than new strangers and when his partner woke up, he’d be able to meet with her properly. He’d be glad they’d both survived whatever hell they’d been through and mean it. They could celebrate her recovery together and have a drink and a laugh and he’d know all the jokes that only partners know.

He stared down at the body on the table and wished desperately to be that man now. He was the man these people had risked their lives to save. Not him.

He was just some old detective who’d lived before the war, standing outside the window of another man’s life, looking in.


	10. The Woman in the Other Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Self-depreciation from trauma turns into the beginnings of something new.

By morning, Nick was no better off than he’d been the night before.

He’d gotten his answers, but all they’d left him with were more questions. 

Over the next few days, Nick found himself falling into a routine. He spent his hours reading files on one of the Railroad terminals that Doctor Amari had prepared for him. A complete history of the New Commonwealth, give or take some information. When he wasn’t reading, he was sitting with one of the people who’d come to pull him out of the cryo-tube, talking to them about all things he couldn’t remember. Another form of the good doctor’s brain therapy.

It was awkward at first. Them knowing him and who he’d been here and he knowing nothing to begin with beyond what his eyes and intuition could tell him; but eventually, the conversations began to smooth themselves out and the tension he’d held whenever someone called his name began to fade.

He spent his time with each of them, listening to stories about their lives and the places they’d been. They told him long yarns on the adventures they’d all had together. They told him what they’d known about the kind of man he’d been.

Piper spent most of her time with him talking about their homes in Diamond City. She had a little sister named Nat he played cards with and she ran the only newspaper left in town. She told him about the upper stands and the lower stands and all the places somewhere in between. She talked about a woman named Ellie who worked as his secretary and all the men that woman had courted before she’d fallen in love with the smooth talking DJ on the radio station they all listened to in the afternoon. She told him that DJ hadn’t always been so smooth, and that he’d had a hand in changing that.

Preston talked mostly about the Minutemen, who they’d been, once long ago, and who they’d since become. He talked about the wars they’d fought. He talked about the settlements they’d built. He talked about the people in the Commonwealth who were still surviving and starting to thrive again. Nick decided he liked Preston, much in the same way he liked Piper. The man had character and he’d walked a hard and lonely road to help save what was left of the world. He respected that.

Cait was the rowdiest of the bunch. She was every bit a fighter and by the sound of it, quite the drinker. She wasn’t tied to a city like Preston or Piper, but she spent her days now working with the Minutemen at some place called the Castle whipping the new recruits into shape. Her skin was thick as could be and he didn’t doubt she’d had a rough life, but when she spoke about getting away from her addictions her edges softened. When he watched her joking around with the others, that same softness came through in spades. Cait was a hard woman, but she was a good one, too.

MacCready had been a pain in the ass at first and Nick got the feeling the two of them hadn’t been such great pals. He was the most reluctant to speak to him and when he did, it was always with the expectation of a fight. Nick didn’t know enough about him to hate the man and so he let the aggression the kid directed at him roll off his back until the biting comments lost their teeth. 

Eventually, it’d come out that MacCready had a kid and that had proven to be the open gate Nick had needed to end their imaginary war. They spent most of their time now talking about Duncan and his new life in a place called Sanctuary. MacCready spent a lot of time on the road working with Preston, but when he rested his feet, he did so in an old yellow sided house with his kid, a dog with a ridiculous name and an old Mr. Handy that apparently came with the town.  


Mac had fixed Nick’s old gun and while it’d been the damn best machine work Nick had ever seen, he’d asked the younger man to keep it in the end. He didn’t have anything left to his name to give and an old gun seemed a poor thank you for all the trouble he’d gone through to help Nick, but the kid was happy for it all the same.

Deacon told him a lot of stories and every one of them was full of bullshit. It was frustrating at first, but after a while, Nick had found a certain charm in it. Nick found it was less about what Deacon said and more about what Deacon did that intrigued him. For all the lies the man could lay down he could pave a small highway; but when Nick watched him, really watched him, he found everything he did was for the others. 

Deacon was a selfless man, the kind of guy who’d give you the shirt off his back, if you didn’t mind the small hole that had eaten through the thin cotton near the neck. When he was nervous, or thinking, or pretending not to listen in on Nick’s conversations with some of the others, he played with a small object in his right jean pocket. At first Nick had thought it was a coin, but he’d caught a glimpse of it once when Deacon had fumbled with it too hard and the silver ring slipped out onto the floor. He’d snatched it up and returned it to it’s hiding place, but Nick had already seen it. Why it was in his pocket and what was the meaning of it, Nick wasn’t sure. But it was there all the same.

He’d met Desdemona and her son Michael, a clever kind of kid who spent a lot of time drawing. They’d tried to tell Nick the kid was some kind of robot, but damned if he could see how. Desdemona was every bit as battle worn and hard-assed as he’d first assessed. He could understand why she led this motley group they called the Railroad; she certainly had the chaps for it. When she spoke with him, she told him stories of the darker days in the Commonwealth. About the prejudices that existed and of how they were slowly being overcome. About the Institute and the nightmare they’d once been. About some kind of jumped up military organization that was obsessed with hoarding technology. Desdemona’s view of the world was bleak, but she seemed to be changing her opinions, however slowly.

He met Curie and Doc Carrington, Doctor Li and a nervous man named T.S. Wallace. Curie had once been part of the same group of friends that had pulled his sorry ass out of the cold, but she’d joined the Railroad sometime after the Institute had fallen to join the team there working on projects like cleaner water for the Commonwealth and plants than thrived in radiation you could eat without getting rad poisoning. She was the most excited about him and his “new” body. She’d apparently once been a robot, too, but somewhere along the line, she’d been put in a fancier sort of case. As disappointing as it’d been to know they weren’t exactly the same, a lot of her stories about her transition and the difficulties she’d faced during that time resonated with him. It was comforting to know he wasn’t the only one that had to deal with an identity crisis in this new world, at the very least.

All in all, they were a good group of people.

Despite their stories, however, the only questions Nick ever asked when it was his turn to lead the conversation, were about Nora. He’d tried to work them in subtly at first, the woman’s name always coming up in their stories, gave him ample opportunity to lead them into giving him more. Trouble was, the more he found out the more he’d wanted to know. After a while, he’d given up on subterfuge and asked about her openly and while he always got a strange look in return, no one seemed to mind talking about her. Quite the opposite, actually.

The damned woman was some kind of godlike saint by the way people spoke about her and he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t a little intimidated. The woman sounded like she was cut straight out of the clouds in Heaven. 

She’d ran from the bombs, walked out of a crazy science experiment with the cryo, lost a husband and son to a mean-faced murderer, and instead of letting all that break her, she’d become the leader of the Minutemen and an Agent of the Railroad instead. She’d toppled the Institute and chased out the Brotherhood of Steel and built settlements and rescued kids and changed the lives of every single person she seemed to come across. And just when she’d become the mythic Lady of the Commonwealth? She’d thrown it all away, retired and moved to Diamond City to run a detective agency with _him._

It sounded crazy when he went through it all in his head.

He sort of wondered if the woman was bonkers.

Even so, he couldn’t help fantasizing about her and what she must be like. He couldn’t believe a woman like that--hell, _any person_ like that--really existed...but he really wanted to. Her friends spoke fondly of her, each and every one, and it wasn’t the kind of fondness people pull out at funerals, when everyone speaks of the dead like they were angels, even if in life they were anything but. It was real and genuine and it made Nick want to meet this woman for himself all the more. 

It was dangerous to build a person up in your head like that, but much as he knew it, he couldn’t help himself. In his mind, she was already some kind of perfect and he hoped to God she’d still stick by him in this body, as she apparently had in his other. He needed something to ground him. Some hope that he could hold onto. If the memories never came back...well...he tried not to think about that.

In the evenings he listened to radio Freedom, lost in the soothing music and trying to remember anything from his life in that other body; while watching people slip in and out of the room with the heavy plastic curtains. She was never without someone in the room. When one person came out, the next person went in. Nick wondered if they’d worked out some kind of schedule between them, but the intervals were random in pattern and no matter how many hours he watched throughout the day, he never found a gap between their visits. 

If there had been, he might have taken a chance to fill it.

Instead, he’d walk the common room, most often when there was no one there to watch him. Each time, his path drew him a little bit closer to the place he now thought of as Nora’s room, but he never went in. Instead he’d casually listen to the voices that spoke on the other side of the curtain, trying to catch a glimpse through their unguarded words of the woman in the other room. 

One evening, Nick had ventured too close to the curtain and the air from his motion caused the plastic to sway just enough that he’d seen Cait sitting by a beside, an impossibly pale hand in her own. At first he thought she was crying, but as he stood there, he could hear the beginnings of a melody in her voice. Nick had stood there a long just listening to the whispery folk songs she sang for her friend.

Most of them just talked to her, in much the same way they talked to him. They spoke to her about the goings on in the Commonwealth, about their lives and loves and children and friends. They spoke to her about inconsequential things. The kind of things friends share, over a cup of coffee in the late nights when the street cleaners were starting to head out.

Sometimes, they asked her to wake up.

Deacon spent the most time on the other side of the curtain. What he did in there, Nick wasn’t privy to. He was the only one that didn’t talk to her. MacCready avoided going in the longest, but once he entered, it was always a long time before he stepped back out again. It was an intriguing dance to watch; individual friendships bottled through the habits of individual people and how they interacted with the woman in the other room. Nick wondered what his own steps would have been, when he’d been the other him. What kind of song led the dance in their friendship and if he’d had two left feet or been a regular Fred Astaire. 

He liked to think they’d manage a pretty good foxtrot. Or a waltz. Something graceful and smooth. Something that they made look easy.

There never seemed to be an update in Nora’s condition. The doctors kept saying it’d be a couple of days, but a couple of days until what, they never said. It was always just a couple of days. A couple of days until she woke? A couple of days until she was well again?

_A couple of days until she died?_

Nick tried not to think about it, but the cryo-sleep had left him with a damn case of insomnia he couldn’t seem to shake, and the extra hours at night gave him plenty of time to wallow in his own head. Amari told him it was normal and in time, it would pass. Nick felt like he was always waiting, these days, for time to pass.

When he did sleep, he crashed on a couch in the common room. Never more than a few hours at a time and always fraught with dreams that left him a mess when he finally did wake.

Doctor Amari had encouraged him to write his dreams down, but there was never any substance left of them by the time he reached for a pencil. He wondered if they were memories trying to sort themselves out. He hoped that would happen soon.

What he did remember from the dreams came to him in insubstantial flashes. They were mostly sounds and scents and occasionally, a feeling.

At first, he dreamt of smoke. Not from a fire or in thick black plumes, but a fine smooth smoke that crawled over still water. It left him feeling cool and calm when he thought about it. Relaxed, even. Sometimes he swore it was the smoke of a cigarette. Not the harsh tobacco of Desdemona’s choice brand, but something sweeter, with a lingering spice. It reminded him of the brand he’d smoked before the war, the kind they cut with cloves mixed into the tobacco, that gave a kick of nicotine that flooded through your body and made the problems in life less important. 

Piper brought him a pack of cigarettes and a gold-plated light the first day he’d been there to make up for the lack of coffee and while the nicotine hit was just what he’d needed and the scent of the smokes was familiar, it was missing something. For some reason, when he thought on it, he imagined that something to be soap. How soap and cigarettes went together? Hell if he knew. Detective or not, there wasn’t enough evidence to build a case with and eventually, he stopped trying to connect the two. Sometimes though, there were these moments...moments where he felt _desperate_ for that scent to come to him again. It was a strange sort of need, all things considered, but it didn’t make the longing for that scent any easier to take.

Nick didn’t experience any nightmares, perse, but the worst of the dreams had been those that left his chest aching and his trousers strained when morning came. These dreams were more substantial than the others, but he never wrote them down, for fear of Amari actually reading about them. They felt too _personal_ , somehow. A kinda thing not meant for sharing.

In those dreams there was always a woman. She sat in his big bay window in the little apartment near the waterfront and though she never spoke, he got the distinct feeling she was waiting for someone. There were flowers everywhere in that dream. Big potted ferns and long boxes of roses amidst stacks of books so high that they over flowed the shelves. It was always early morning in that dream and the cream colored dress she wore looked more like a buttery yellow as she sat in the sunlight with bright blue skies behind her. He could never see her face, but when she took a drag off her cigarette, he felt like she was smiling at him. 

Nothing else ever happened in that dream. The woman just smoked and waited in the sunlight of the window and he stood and watched from a distance; but it left him wanting in a way that lingered for hours after he’d woken. 

At first, he’d thought the dreams might of had something to do with Jenny, but he’d never dreamt of her like this. When Jenny had haunted his dreams, it was always with blood on her back and an accusation on her dying lips.

And she’d hated that apartment of his anyway. He didn’t imagine she’d like it any better now, even in his dreams.

After several nights in HQ, Nick’s mood shifted. He felt irritated and stuck. The semi-calm he was starting to find had left him and he was antsy in a way the smokes couldn’t fix. He needed... _something._ Something intangible and just out of reach, like a word caught on the tip of your tongue. He tried to sleep, but the couch was no longer comfortable. It was lacking, but lacking what? Like everything else, he didn’t know. Didn’t help matters that the damned insomnia left him in a perpetual state of awareness that further exacerbated the irritation.

He just couldn’t get his brain to shut down.

Long after the others had gone to bed, he began to pace. He walked the length of the common room in long strides, puffing on a cigarette to distract his hands and looking through his mind for reasonable distractions. It’d help if they’d let him drink. A glass of whiskey always calmed his nerves, the smooth burn a reassurance he’d find relaxation soon. But Amari had banned the stuff from his intake for the time being. She didn’t want him drowning in alcohol when what he really needed was a clear head. 

He’d considered trying to sleep again, when Piper slipped out from behind the plastic curtains, and made her way into the back passage where she and Preston slept. Nick waited in the shadow of his alcove to see who would be the next person to take up the watch in Nora’s room. But no one came.

A moment passed. 

And then another.

Nick wished he’d asked someone the time so he could wind his watch. 

And still no one came.

Were they really going to leave her all alone in there?

He didn’t like that thought.

 _Someone_ should be in there.

Nick edged out of his alcove, snuffing out his cigarette. HQ was quiet when it’s people slept, uncomfortably so. There wasn’t anything to distract him from the soft hum of machinery just beyond the curtain. The lights in there were always kept softer in the evenings and the pale blues and whites that blurred together behind the plastic were inviting. He stepped closer to the curtains.

His heart felt like it was pounding in his chest now. He was nervous. Nick’s mind started racing.

It was like sitting in a stakeout a moment before you knew the call to go was coming in.

He tried to rationalize what he was about to do. Common sense told him to go back to his alcove and try to sleep it off. He should wait until she was up and about again. He was a stranger to her right now, he tried to reason, and she to him. That chair they all sat in by the bedside, it was for the people that cared.

Not that he didn’t care. It just didn’t feel right, was all. Not with her in there like that and him out here in this body, like this. He’d sit with her when he was fully himself again. It’d be better for both of them not to complicate things.

It wouldn’t hurt to take a peek though. Just to be sure she was still breathing all right. He didn’t have to go in, he could avoid the chair. He’d just look in from the doorway and check on her from a distance. He could satisfy his curiosity and no one would be worse for the wear. 

Nick took a deep breath.

His fingertips brushed the edge of the plastic and his heart gave a leap. One look suddenly wasn’t enough. He needed to sit in that chair, and before he could change his mind, he slipped behind the curtain. 

The room within was larger than he’d expected, with an arched ceiling and blue lacquered machines lining the walls. Desdemona had told him how they’d renovated the space; she talked about how it used to be a gun range and how after the war with the Institute, they’d converted it into a proper lab, meant for finding ways to save people rather than hurt them. It seemed like the kind of space that sort of grassroots altruism might take place in, deep underground beneath the Old North Church. 

A variety of science projects seemed to be scattered about the place, including small greenhouse of fruits and vegetables growing along the back wall. Some sort of water filtration system was the source of the soft humming, a glass beaker and pump rhythmically filling and emptying in endless cycles. It reminded him a little of his old French Press. It looked a little like his old French Press, scrapped together and re-purposed. He liked the ingenuity of these people. 

The floor was surprisingly clean; a mishmash of linoleum tiles had been relaid, taken from a variety of places if their color and patterns were any indication. A small bucket and mop stood in one corner with a box of Abraxo. He had a feeling Curie had been behind that, she seemed the type that might worry about a clean work space. Along the right hand wall, set into the brick, there were two alcoves much like the one he slept in, both dark as sin and deep enough that the spotlights above the small hospital bed couldn’t peek in.

And then, there was Nora. 

She was angled away from the door in such a way, he’d never have been able to see her from the curtain, but he could hear her breathing. As he came around the bed, he finally saw her. 

She lay on her back, propped up by the bent mattress, her skin pale as the sheets and her hair a pitch black in the white light. A thick layer of blankets covered her to the waist and a man’s button down minus the sleeves served as a makeshift hospital gown. 

For all the things he’d thought of saying to her over the past few hours and days, imagining how he’d introduce himself and how he’d apologize for not knowing her like he should, he couldn’t think of any of them now.

Nick suddenly felt like he should take off his hat, though he kept it on. He approached her cautiously, his steps in time with each of her soft breaths, and took her in. The image of her in his mind had been a poor imitation now that he was faced with her reality.

She was pretty, in that way you imagine fairytale heroines to be. A real Snow White laid out in her glass bed and waiting for her prince to come. Her dark hair was messy, the wayward strands of those choppy lengths nearly brushing her shoulders. It was the kind of hair you could imagine would catch nicely in a breeze. A fine smattering of freckles crossed her small nose and dotted her cheeks before taking up again on the tops of her shoulders. Her lips were a pale kind of pink and by the way they were shaped, the kind that would light up a room when she used them to smile. 

He doubted she was as tall as he was, imagined she’d fit just under his chin, and she was a just a hair on the fragile side of slender. She wasn’t a big woman at all. He tried to imagine her leading armies. She looked more like the kind of woman who wouldn’t give him the time of day. The kind of woman who was quick and clever and had a laugh you could live on. The kind of woman who was easy to love.

He needed another word for her than beautiful. Beautiful wasn’t enough to do her justice. 

He’d spent so much time trying to piece together the puzzle that was Nora over the last few days, it seemed odd now to be standing beside her and taking in her graces on his own rather than filtered through another person’s stories. He felt like an intruder watching her sleep. He was suddenly desperate to know what it sounded like when she said his name.

Nick had hoped that when he finally saw her, his missing pieces would all come rushing back to him. He’d placed all his bets on her being the thing that could fix him, somehow. There were no memories flashing through his mind, however: His head was still as empty of the time after the bombs fell as the shell of his other body lying in the far room. 

But as his breathing softly quickened and his heart thrummed in a fluttery roll, Nick knew something had changed.

In place of sparking a memory, she seemed to have ignited a feeling. He wasn’t sure he’d know what to call it if asked, but it felt something akin to pain. He couldn’t tell if it was a pleasant feeling. It was just a deep and lasting ache that bit him to his core. It pulled at him and his skin twitched in anticipation for want of action. Nick felt overwhelmed by it. The longing the dream about the woman in his window brought on was a soft breeze compared to this gale and in his mind, it tasted bittersweet, but wonderful.

Like tobacco and soap.

His hand seemed to move of its own accord then. It reached up, hovering a moment beside the skin of her temple, before his fingers slid into the silk of her hair and he brushed it back and behind her ear, his thumb and forefinger following the length of it until his knuckle touched her collarbone. Jesus, she was soft.

Her breath deepened in what might have been a sigh, before returning to the slow and steady pace it held before he’d touched her. Nick withdrew his hand. It felt like he’d been burned.

He studied her, intensely memorizing her every detail in the sudden worry he’d forget about her all over again if he turned away. She looked like she’d been through hell and had come out the other side alive, but not without a cost. Now that he looked at her more closely, he took in the many cuts and bruises marring her soft skin, and though it looked as if someone had tried to bathe her, washes of blood stains and something like ink still remained. He followed the line of buttons down her shirt. If she’d been wounded, the blankets and shirt covered the evidence well. No one would tell him exactly what had put her in this bed.

He wondered if she’d been shot by the same kind of gun his other body had been. He wondered how she’d survived it she had been. There wasn’t enough to her to take that kind of hit. Maybe that’s why his other body had been torn apart so badly.

Nick took her hand in his, trying his best to be gentle. He felt like a clod holding such a delicate thing in his oversized paws. Her fingers had been scraped raw in places, the scabs just beginning to form. And there, on her third finger…

The ache in his chest swelled as his fingertips brushed her ring. No one had told him she’d been _married_. Jesus, why hadn’t anyone said anything? He looked at the small band of silver encircling her finger, the polish on it as scraped up as her knuckles. He wondered if her husband knew she was lying here all beat to hell. He wondered why he hadn’t come to visit.

Or was that why Deacon had the ring in his pocket? Had he given her the other half of a matching set? He certainly had the look of a man that had lost something and his sunglasses couldn’t hide the change in his tone when he spoke about Nora. He spent an awful lot of time behind the curtain. Did he sit with her, letting his fingertips brush her ring as Nick’s did now? Had he pocketed his own to avoid the pain looking at it would cost him?

Nick wasn’t sure. The pieces didn’t all fit, and the more he tried to play detective right now, the more uncomfortable he felt again just standing there. There was real pain in his chest now and he swallowed hard in the hopes of quelling it. He needed to think about something else. He let his eyes slip away from that ring. The damn thing made his head hurt.

It was then that he noticed the black writing covering the back of her arm. Like the blood, someone had tried to wash it away, but the lines were written with some kind of permanent marker and that kind of ink took a while to fade. It was hard to see in the shadows he cast over her, but it was legible now that the light could reach it.

He squinted to make out the text against the spotlight. Some kind of message? No, a list.

_A chem list._

Nick felt a wave of nausea hit him hard in the gut as he read the numbers and understood what they’d meant. He’d seen addicts before, but he’d never seen someone so small take so much before. The writing continued from the outside of her arm on in. He wasn’t sure where the hell she’d gotten her hands on Buffout, but to mix it with something like Psycho? That crap had been dangerous to mess with even before the war. An irrational anger came over him suddenly and it deepened when he saw the apology she’d written near her elbow.

_Sorry, John_

_John_ , not Deacon. 

Not _Nick._

His old cop brain was on fire now as it fought against the overwhelming myriad of emotions without context he’d been hit with from the moment he’d stepped into this room.

It made a sick sort of sense now and much as it shattered the fairy tale he’d concocted in his head, this...this was the kind of world he was used to. The kind of world he should have expected.

So, what did he know? Reason it out. You’re still a detective, put it together. Only the facts...none of the fantasy.

Her friends had told him only bits and pieces about her, but there was always an air like they’d been hiding something. Something they didn’t want him to know, most likely, because he wouldn’t accept it. Easy enough.

She was married and she was a chem user. The marriage made no sense to hide, unless Nick hadn’t liked the guy, but the chems were another matter. Didn’t sound like the other him had changed his morals in this time, he’d still known right from wrong. A chem here and there might bother him, he wouldn’t like it, but he’d let it pass. He could understand a vice. God knew he had enough of them, but there was a limit. Helping someone with addiction was one thing, working with them was another. And Psycho? Jesus, he’d seen what that shit could make a man do. 

And maybe it was a petty thing to get so angry over, but the thought of her pumping that shit into her veins made him livid.

For some reason, he didn’t think Deacon would stand for that either. So, maybe he’d been on the wrong track with Deacon. Otherwise, it’d be his name printed on her arm, wouldn’t it? You don’t apologize for nearly killing yourself with chems to just anybody. That somebody had to be important enough to think of in the end. Somebody you cared about. Someone special.

Nick imagined this John...whoever he was...could be the mystery guy behind the ring on her finger. And if that were true, had he known John in that other body? Was he aware that she used and more importantly, did he care? Had the other Nick ever drank with him and promised he’d protect the guy’s wife as they played cops in this crummy, fucked up new world?

The anger and the ache in his chest were at war now and even as his face drew into a scowl, he set her arm back to the bed with care. Christ, he’d been a fool, building up and romanticizing the woman in the other room, like some...like some kinda softheaded chump. He’d heard a lifetime full of stories he couldn’t remember about her exploits and had fallen in love with the idea of being partnered to a woman like that. A woman with morals and empathy and a desire to help the world who might take pity on him even in his current sorry state and allow him to still tag along with her, even if he couldn’t remember how they’d met.

And good God, he was being unfair to this woman. It was all so irrational the way he was feeling right now and he knew that...he _knew_ that, but still...

He’d wanted something in this world he could still call his _own_ , like that damned little apartment with the bay window down near the waterfront. And...and it was _selfish_ as all hell, but from the first time he’d heard her name _something_ inside him had hoped she might be it. 

She was _his_ partner and even knowing the sheer number of people out there that she’d counted among her friends, the idea that he was something _special_ to her, something named and accounted for that the others couldn’t claim had filled him with something other than the emptiness and despair that threatened to drown him every damn hour he spent awake in this new world.

But she wasn’t a free agent. And she wasn’t his fantasy. She had a husband and a home somewhere and she’d shot herself so full up with garbage, she was stuck in this damn bed where he couldn’t even shout at her to ask why. 

_Goddamn it._ She’d _hurt_ him. A woman he couldn’t even remember and she’d hurt him. All because she hadn’t lived up to the crazy ideal he’d built up in his head of a kind-hearted partner who’d lead him back to some semblance of a life and give him something to trust other than himself out there in this new Commonwealth.

Jesus, what was she doing to him. And why would she ever do this to herself, when she seemed to have the world bowed at her feet. It just didn’t make sense. Nothing made any sense anymore. He felt the sudden urge to cry, felt the tears trying to rise up through his throat until he choked on them. And he hated her for it.

For the first time since waking, he wished they’d left him to rot in that damned pod.

“I don’t know what I was expecting of you,” he shook his head, voice hitched and dripping with derision against the incessant ache that tore at his ribs. “But this wasn’t it.”

“Hey!”

Nick nearly jumped straight out of his skin at the anger in that sudden bark. He heard the sharp strike of a match and the soft hiss of a cigarette being lit. From the darkness of the first alcove, he saw the orange bud of the tobacco. The man within took a long slow drag, before blowing his smoke out of the darkness where it caught and swirled under the spotlight. The tiny orange light rose with the man and in two smooth strides, he stood opposite Nick on the other side of Nora’s bed.

If Nick believed in the Devil, he’d believe he’d finally met him here, at the end of the world, stepping out of the shadows of that small alcove.

The ghoul cut an imposing figure in the dimly lit room and though Nick stood his ground, he felt the urge to run. He was wiry and tall he had to lean down ever so slightly to look Nick in the eye. His faded red coat was like a beacon in the blue of the room and beneath the shadow of his hat, pitch black eyes glared at him. This man made the General of the Minutemen look soft. He was all long lines and hard, sharp edges.

The guy gave him an appraising look. He wasn’t impressed by what he saw.

“So, this is you now, eh?” the ghoul’s voice was low and full of gravel. “Hmph. Kinda liked the old look better. Had more...character.”

He shifted his weight, his free hand coming to rest on the flag tied at his hips while the he gestured with his cigarette.

“Listen, brother. I realize how fucked up things must be for you right now and don’t think I ain’t sympathetic to that.”

He took another drag off the cigarette, those black eyes never breaking with Nick’s grey, even as the smoke rose between them like a challenge.

“They tell me you gotta couple of screws loose. More so than you used to and that’s a hell of a thing to deal with after the nap you took. But, whether you remember it or not? Doesn’t matter. What matters is what you do from here.”

“Personally, I liked the old you. He was a good kinda guy. A kinda guy that was easy to like. A guy I might have even respected once or twice, you get me? ”

He flicked the ash from his cigarette behind him in one smooth, sharp motion.

“You and I, we got a history and I can cut you a lotta leeway considering all the crap you’re dealing with,” he leaned forward ever so slightly. Casually. His eyes narrowed. “But I won’t put up with _anyone_ talking shit about this woman here. You even think something fucked up in her direction and I’ll slit your goddamned throat, understand?”

Nick’s fear of the man was flushed out by his cop’s bravery. He didn’t take to being threatened by the mob. He certainly wasn’t going to be pushed around by a goddamned zombie.

“Haven’t seen you around HQ,” Nick eyes narrowed to match the ghoul’s. “You come with the room or did they just chain you up in here?”

“Nice to see you haven’t forgotten your sense of humor,” the ghoul smirked at him. He’d struck low and he knew it. “Maybe you could try remembering some fucking manners next.”

They’d reached an impasse and were left eyeing one another over the body of a woman like a couple of angry guard dogs. Nick wasn’t interested in a pissing contest. This ghoul was really pissing him off.

“Cut the crap, smart-ass. How’d you get in here?” Nick finally snarled. 

“Through the front door, same as everybody,” the damn ghoul had the fucking nerve to grin.

“Bullshit,” Nick pointed sharply at the curtain. “I’ve watched everybody that’s come in and out of this room here for days.”

“Just means I’ve been here the whole time, doesn’t it?” The ghoul smirked. 

That one threw Nick off the rails. His mind was already unwrapping it. She’d never been alone in here. This guy had been with her.

“Doing what exactly?” The anger he was feeling at that thought showing through.

“Sitting in the place where you should have been,” the ghoul’s voice lost any tone of amusement as he gestured toward the chair by the bedside.

Nick’s next comment died on his tongue and he broke free from their staring contest in shame. The ghoul took another drag from his smoke, releasing it with a long tired sigh.

“Sorry, that one was too low.”

“No, I...I probably deserved that,” Nick shook his head and gave a half-hearted smile in recompense. “Been sitting on the other side of that curtain for days. Took me long enough to step through.”

“You’re here now,” the ghoul was looking at him thoughtfully now. “So, what’s eating you.”

Now that was the million dollar question. Nick’s eyes searched the room for a moment before drifting back to Nora, still peacefully asleep in the bed. He tucked his hands into his trouser pockets and shrugged.

“I dunno. I just thought...I don’t know what I thought. They’ve been telling me stories about her for days. Didn’t think to mention she’d been slinging up. Guess it kinda took me by surprise.”

The ghoul looked at him a long moment, before throwing back his head in a deep, long laugh. 

“You seriously think Nora’s a Chem user?” He was gasping the laugh had hit him so hard. It was a raspy, unpleasant noise in Nick’s ears right now. He felt like he’d missed something.

“I think the evidence is pretty clear on that one,” Nick reached out and skimmed the black words on the underside of her left arm.

“Look and learn, _detective_ ,” he filled that word with sarcasm, nodding towards Nora’s body. “She look like she slings chems regularly to you?”

For a moment, Nick wanted to say something just as snarky and hateful back, but when he looked at Nora again, really looked, some of the hardness in his heart fell away.

“I don’t…no.”

“Good answer,” the ghoul nodded once in approval. He pointed to a table behind the foot of the hospital bed that Nick hadn’t noticed before. It was littered with a collection of glass vials and syringes. “We wouldn’t be fighting so damn hard to keep her breathing if she did. She’d have built up a tolerance to some of it by now, which unfortunately, she ain’t got.”

“We?” Nick cocked a brow and looked back at the ghoul.

“Who do you think’s been in here flushing this shit out of her system. Carrington? Curie?,” he scoffed. “They don’t know shit about this kind of Chem overdose.”

“But you do,” Nick narrowed his eyes. Some of the pieces were falling together now.

“Yeah, I do. Made half the shit she took to begin with,” there was a sad air of pride there as the ghoul looked down at Nora. He hadn’t wanted her to take them, even Nick could see that. That face was filled with regret. “Put em in her hands, myself.”

The ghoul threw the butt of his spent cigarette into the dark alcove and extended his hand.

“John Hancock.”

Nick’s eyes went wide as they shook hands. John. He’d given her the chems. He hadn’t wanted her to take them. She didn’t normally take them. And he’d come to save her after. The picture was starting to clear up.

“She left that message for you.”

“So I’d know what was in her system when and if she ever needed it,” John nodded. 

“But, why give her the chems at all?” 

“Because I wanted her to keep living,” Hancock’s voice was quiet as he said it. Serious. Nick wondered for a moment if he hadn’t been wrong about the ring, just wrong about the man. 

Hancock gave a dismissive gesture, rubbing at his head. He looked tired. If a ghoul could look tired.

“Look, I don’t know how you guys dealt with shit before the war, but sometimes things go down out there and you need a little something extra to get you back out of it.”

“What the hell was she fighting out there that she needed all this,” Nick shook his head. He’d seen some of the monsters this world had to offer first hand, but he couldn’t imagine what sort of beast you’d need a stack of chems this high to face. The idea of it made him shudder.

“She wasn’t fighting. She was running,” Hancock corrected him. “The stash I gave her was for emergencies only. She knew that.”

“Must of been some kind of emergency,” Nick conceded. 

“Yeah, must’ve been,” John’s ruined fingers gently took hold of Nora’s right wrist. He turned it.

 

_Save Nick_

 

For a moment, Nick forgot to breathe. He stared at the fading message on her pale skin and something inside his throat caught thick and painful.

“You two were headed home from my place that morning,” John started, the gravel in his voice a dull purr. “Had one hell of a party the night before. The way through’s been clear for years now, only some asshole decided he’d try to step in and take you two out.”

His mottled fingers slipped forward to hold her hand. It was a graceful motion for hands that looked like that. Different as they were, they looked like hands that belonged together.

“He was the kinda guy that was good at killing people and you two took him out. He did a hell of a number on the both of you before he went down though,” he continued. “Nora slung the chems so she could get you to the Railroad. Went a little overboard...but your carcass in the other room ain’t light.”  


Jesus. Nick could feel his shoulders rising and falling with his breaths now. He tried to imagine the desperation she must have felt. He couldn’t imagine letting her do that. Not for him.

He watched John’s thumb stroke smooth circles into her palm. 

“Y’know, we used to travel all over the Commonwealth together, her and me,” Hancock broke the silence that had grown up in that moment. He sounded wistful. “Did a lotta good things for a lotta good people. Didn’t much like it when she’d step out with one of the others. Couldn’t be sure they’d bring her back in one piece. It’s why she had the kit.”

He squeezed her hand. It was the kind of thing you did when you were saying goodbye to someone. A tiny gesture of reassurance that you’d see them around sometime. He set her arm back upon the sheets just as gently as he’d taken it.

“Never worried about that with you though,” Hancock looked straight at Nick then. “You? You’d take the bullet for her, same as me.”

The guilt crawled up Nick’s spine and wrapped around his throat. He couldn’t look the ghoul in the eye. Not with her lying there like that.

“Doesn’t seem like I lived up to that kinda trust this time.”

“Brother, I still got eyes,” John shook his head. “That rifle almost cut you in two. Nora caught a shot of it, sure, but where the wounds left off on her, they picked up on you.”

Nick raised his head, frowning.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Carrington,” Hancock chuckled. “He might be shit with Chems, but he’s treated enough wounds from an Institute rifle to know what it meant. You did good out there and you both came out of it in one piece...more or less. Anything else? It’s just details and time.”

John swayed again, his shoulders rolling in a cat-like stretch before he turned and headed for the curtain. 

“You take this watch. I need a chem break. Ain’t had a huff of Jet for days.”

Nick just stood there for a minute, listening to silence of the ghoul’s leather boots against the linoleum. No wonder Nick had never heard him in here. The man was as quiet as a ghost. 

_It’s just details and time._

“Hey, John,” Nick turned as Hancock reached for the edge of the curtain. “You happen to know the time?”

John reached into his vest pocket and retrieved a gold pocket watch.

“Seven on the dot,” he smirked, before replacing the watch and disappearing into the darkness on the other side of the curtain.

Nick wound his watch and set it, listening to the quiet ticking as it counted seconds after two centuries of silence. Knowing the time and being able to keep it made him happier than he would have thought possible. It was probably just the watch. It was a sentimental thing, this watch, much like he imagined Hancock’s was. It looked just like the one that had once belonged to his older brother.

Nick sat carefully on the chair.

Hancock had an older brother. And that was his watch.

That thought shook him and even as he let go of the breath he’d been holding, Nick grinned. He knew it like he knew his own name. It was just a truth. A truth he knew to be real.

Nick decided he liked John Hancock. He didn’t treat him with the same kid gloves the others had. The ghoul had shot straight with him, feeding him the details of that fateful day when Nora had saved him. 

He looked at her now. Really looked. 

She slept peacefully in the soft light of the room, her chest rising and falling in easy breaths. The sweep of longing was back in his chest again full force and he loosened his tie from the tight knot he’d kept it in, taking the first two buttons of his shirt with it, to relieve the strain.

He needed another word for her than beautiful. She was a goddamned angel, if he’d ever met one.

He still wasn’t sure who was tied to her heart through that ring, but as he stared at the words she’d left in an awkward handwriting on her pale skin, he hoped it was John. If she could love a good man who looked like that, he might understand why she’d partnered up with him in that other body. 

It didn’t make the feeling in his chest ache any less. Didn’t change the desire he suddenly felt to live in another man’s shoes. But it was enough to know she’d wanted him to live.

After what had happened with Jenny, he’d spent a lot of time trying to do anything but.

Nick slipped his hand under hers. It didn’t feel as awkward now and some of the tension in his chest went away. He liked the way her fingertips barely brushed his wrist.

He didn’t say anything as he sat in the chair at her bedside. Instead, he held her hand and watched her breathe and asked in his mind for her to wake up. Before he left her side late the next afternoon, he pressed his lips to the back of her knuckles, letting them linger a long moment there, before giving her hand a tiny squeeze as a promise he’d return soon.

Much later, as he showered and shaved and waited for another gap between visitors, he thought back to the time he’d spent at her bedside. 

For a moment, he would have sworn her skin smelled of tobacco and soap.


	11. Time and Details

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just wanted to say: I am sorry I haven't responded to comments yet. I am reading them and I can't say thank you enough for the support, I'm just cranking out the new chapters as fast as I can type them. Thanks for your patience!

Nick woke on his couch in the HQ common room a little past eight in the morning.

He was sleeping a little longer with each day that passed, a fact that made Doctor Amari hum in that way she did when she approved of something. He was beyond the four hour mark now, which she took as a good sign.

Nick wasn’t as pleased with the receding of his insomnia as she was, however. His dreams were becoming more vivid the longer he slept and he was occasionally getting flashes of his life in the other body during the day. It wasn’t as disconcerting as it could have been, all things considered, but each time a new piece of information slid into place, it made the gaps in his memory feel that much worse.

Doctor Amari continued urging him to give it time, continued to insist it could all come back at once someday or that it might continue to filter in slowly until his tank was back to full. She spoke to him about memory triggers: Sights, sounds, smells, and how, like John’s watch, they’d continue to happen until his brain could sort through all the material Lola had crammed it full with. Honestly, it was a lot of the same psychobabble the pre-war docs had fed him after the Winter fiasco and he was no more happy about it now as he’d been then.

Much as he hated to admit it, however, she wasn’t wrong.

What had started with Hancock’s gold watch had spread, like water dripping off icicles off an eve. The memories filtered into his brain as if they’d always been there and it was always a bit jarring when it happened. He could remember some people and places now, not always in full, but in moments and small details. He knew that Piper drank more Nuka-cola than water and preferred cherry over the plain. He knew that MacCready had once taken down a Deathclaw with a clean shot through it’s skull before it had managed to get half way across the bridge at Sanctuary when it had chased one of the provisioners there. He knew that John Hancock had once lived under a different name, with a different face, and that he could inhale enough Jet to kill a Brahmin and still keep walking. He also knew they’d stood side by side on the rooftop of the Mass Fusion building downtown and watched the Institute that had haunted them both, burn.

Not that Nick was complaining. With every detail that came back to him, he was feeling less out of place than he had when he’d first arrived at HQ. It felt like a small accomplishment every time something came back to him, even when that something had been a game of solitaire he’d played during a forced three week underground vacation courtesy of Skinny Malone. 

But try as Nick might, the one thing he wanted to remember, was the one thing his mind refused to give him. He couldn’t remember Nora.

And for a woman he’d supposedly spent so much time with, those memories were still tightly wrapped somewhere in his brain under lock and key. He spend a lot of his day in her room now, just holding her hand and reading to her from the books they’d found in her postman’s bag. He’d forgone touching Brave New World at first, on account of the large rust brown stain that now graced the front cover. Just looking at it had dropped his heart towards his stomach. Much as he wanted something of Nora to remember, he hoped when the memories did return, the first ones that came back wouldn’t be from _that_ morning.

They were more than halfway through The Secret Garden, now. The book called to mind his dream of the woman sitting in his bay window, surrounded by roses. It still left him with the dull ache and a sense of longing that lasted until lunchtime, but he looked forward to the times it came. It was peaceful, somehow. He never walked any closer to her and the sunlight still kept her face in shadows as she smoked, but he was content to just exist in the space with her. Only once had the dream changed. 

It was the same woman from the bay window, but she was sitting in a house he’d never been to. It wasn’t the sunlight that kept her in shadow there, but a soft white reading lamp behind her red chair. She’d held a book in one hand and a cigarette in the other and the room was full of an odd array of plants with big purple and yellow blooms that smelled sweet and mixed well with the spice of the tobacco. Colored faerie lights lined the ceiling and sheet metal walls were covered in vintage posters and flickering neon hearts. Books lined every available shelf. She looked up at him and called his name and for all the world, it sounded like a love song on her lips.

He’d try to deny it at first, out of self preservation and a sense of maintaining his dignity, but deep down, secretly; he wanted that woman to be Nora.

She was his partner, however, and that, that had to be enough. There was still a ring on her finger and while he still couldn’t decide if it belonged to John or to Deacon or even to the husband they’d said she’d lost, one thing was clear: Neither he, nor his synth body had one to match.

He’d stopped torturing himself about it, though. Eventually, he was sure he’d find out, but for all the things he and the others spoke about, it never came up. And he was too afraid of the answer to ask.

When he did ask questions about things, more often than not, he sought out John Hancock. After that first night they’d become reacquainted in Nora’s room, he’d taken a liking to the man’s company and when they weren’t relieving each other of shifts by her bedside, they played cards, smoked and, thanks to an admirable speech to Doctor Amari from her Mayor, they shared a bottle of the worst whiskey Nick had ever tasted. All the same, it was the best he’d ever had. 

He let Nick know that Nora was on the mend. It’d taken a long while to flush her systems of the chems, as more chems were required to counteract the effects of the ones she’d taken. He’d weaned her off them slowly and then started a course of Addictol, keeping her sedated throughout so that she’d sleep through the pain and side-effects. When she finally woke, she’d be clean and healthy and never remember the hell her body had been through. Hancock hadn’t lied that first night. He knew how to deal with the chems.

It was just one of the many reasons that John was the kind of guy Nick respected. He had a sharp tongue that could keep up with Nick’s own as they snarked at one another over cards and caps--a currency Nick was still trying to wrap his head around. He wasn’t too fond of John’s frequent chem breaks, but Hancock reassured him that a ghoul’s physiology was such that he could handle himself without worry. He’d only tried once to get Nick to partake in a Jet break and had laughed himself stupid when Nick had responded in a long string of colorful euphemisms for drug addled criminals and law enforcement. John shrugged and called it his loss and declared Nick as boring as his synth counterpart when it came to kicking back.

Despite his laissez-faire attitude towards life, John Hancock was a good man with a lot more depth than he let on. On rarer occasions, they talked about their lives, John about the loss of his brother to the Institute and Nick about Eddie Winters and Jenny. It was surprisingly freeing to talk about with the ghoul, who knew more than a thing or two about guilt and grief and running away from problems. It made things...easier, after a time. 

John was also the most candid about Nora. He didn’t just speak about what she did in the Commonwealth. When he talked about her with Nick, he spoke mostly of her as a person. He humanized her in a way the others hadn’t, speaking about how she’d dealt with her own grief and trauma. According to John, she smoked too much and ate too little, mostly on account of her running around all the time. Her tongue was sharp, but always tempered, and he’d respected her for the mercy she’d shown people, even those he’d felt deserved otherwise.

Only one time did he mention her in context with himself in a way that didn’t involve battle or their travels. Nick had asked how he’d come to start traveling with Nora in the first place, being a mayor and all. The humor John had held a moment before faded to something more like reverence and he spoke about her saving him at a time when he’d been looking for anything but a life. Somehow, she’d managed to change his view of the world for the better and John had returned home to Goodneighbor hellbent on finishing what he’d started there. The town was still a free city, but the dangerous criminal element had been wiped out and his warehouses had been turned into homes. He claimed it wasn’t as exciting there now as it used to be, but Nick could see the pride under that smirk, regardless.

As they entered their third week at HQ, Piper and Preston had convinced him to take a walk with them to the riverfront, and while he’d been uneasy about leaving Nora’s bedside, John had all but kicked them out the back entrance. They spent the morning and a good deal of the afternoon outside, Preston occasionally pointing out landmarks and Piper recounting them with wild stories about her days as a journalist on the run from raiders that made her Minuteman more than a little peaky. The city was still in ruins and the world Nick knew was gone, but it didn’t make him feel as melancholy as he had that first day they’d walked back to HQ. They passed a cafe he’d once helped take down a notorious russian gangster from New York in and he regaled them with the whole sordid affair, pleased by their honest interest in his tale.

It occurred to Nick on the walk back later that afternoon that he’d enjoyed his time out with the couple. It was a new experience for him that went beyond the sterile gatherings of acquaintances he’d been so used to in his former life. He could understand now why Jenny had held her friends so near and dear and why she fretted over keeping up with all of them. He wondered why he’d never connected with people like this before the bombs fell.

He’d always assumed the problem had been with him.

As they graced the steps of the Old North Church, he got a real flash of memory from his other body and though it was quick, he could remember seeing stars in the sky and grumbling over a smear of super-mutant blood down the front of his coat that would be a real bear to scrub out. Someone had laughed at him then; from the dark interior of the church. The memory ended there, but that laugh...God, it was beautiful.

The ache in his chest bloomed fresh, but it happened so often now, he just lived with it. 

It was all just time and details.

They chatted about the radiation content in Quantum Cola as they made their way into HQ, debating whether or not it was worth the rads to finish a whole bottle. Piper was firmly for it, while Preston looked at her like she’d grown another head...a real possibility with the radiation around these days. They were still laughing as they entered the warmth of HQ, when Piper came to a dead halt in front of Nick and he’d had to sidestep not to crash into her. His hand flew to the top of his fedora as he regained his footing, pushing it firmly back into place as he straightened back out again. His smiled fell the moment he looked up and he understood what had stopped Piper in her tracks.

There, beside the war table, stood Nora.

Nick’s heart stopped for a full beat in his chest and all the sound seemed to drop from the room.

Her eyes were _blue._ Blue like the sky.

She stood still as a statue, her delicate fingers peeking out from where they held a grey woolen blanket around herself. She wore a pair of threadbare jeans and what looked to be one of Deacon’s t-shirts and dear God, he wanted another word for her than beautiful.

“Blue!” Piper ran forward, throwing her arms around Nora’s shoulders. Both Deacon and John flinched to put a hand to Nora’s back in case she went tumbling. “Oh my god, you’re awake! We were so worried. Jesus, don’t scare us like that again! I didn’t think that you’d ever...I was beginning to worry that you were...”

“Piper,” she said. And her voice was soothing and low, like smoke drifting over water. “It’s all right, now. I’m still here.”

“Yes, yes, you are,” Piper hugged her tighter for a moment before pulling back. There were tear tracks down her cheeks. “Dunno, why I ever doubted it. Sometimes I think you have nine lives.”

“Might be down a couple after this one,” Nora gave a breathy laugh.

It struck Nick that he’d heard her laugh before. That he’d _made_ her laugh before.

“Man, I am being _really_ rude right now,” Piper’s chuckle was wet, even as Nora reached up with the edge of her blanket to dry Piper’s cheeks. It was a small action, but a gentle one. “So, uh...we should probably introduce you to...ah...Nick.”

He barely registered his own name when Piper said it. His feet were cemented to the floor as the group turned to look at him. His grey eyes met her blue and stuck. For a moment, they just stared at one another.

“Go on, Sunshine,” Hancock murmured quietly near her ear and gave her a little shove. “He ain’t gonna bite ya’.”

Nick’s heart was racing wildly as he watched her take a deep breath and her right foot edged forward. It was a small step, but he suddenly was panicking over a thousand different things at once. He should take off his hat, he should meet her halfway, he should, he should…

Jesus, what if she rejected him. What if she couldn’t deal with him like this, as a human. What would she say when he couldn’t remember her, didn’t know her last name, had no idea what she did on Sundays…Christ, he wasn’t ready for this, much as he had wanted it. He was more scared of her now than when she’d been a ghost behind a curtain. She could break him in a word if she wanted. His heart was glass to her stone and he didn’t think he could handle a tumble right now if she tossed him.

She stopped before her next step, a strange look crossing her features. Something like recognition. It was only there for a fraction of a moment, just a slight raise of an eyebrow and a quirk of her chin, before her feet were moving again. Her expression was so goddamned hard to read. He’d lose every hand of poker to her, he was sure of it. 

Three steps.

Two.

Then one.

She stood before him with just enough room for a person between them and the urge to hold her was unbearable. His arms ached to close the distance and know what it felt like when she was pressed against his chest and her heart was beating against his skin.

Nick forgot to breathe as she looked up at him.

“Hey, Valentine.”

That ache that had grown into a ball he’d been living with behind his ribs burst and the longing he’d known before was nothing like this. She made his name into a love song. One that he wanted to hear for the rest of his life. He’d die if just to listen to her voice around those letters one more time.

“I-I, uh…”

Smooth, Valentine. Real _smooth._

“I hear tell that you’re my partner,” He cringed right after he said it. No use hiding it; just get the words out. “Sorry to say...I can’t remember it.”

Her lips pressed together ever so slightly and she blinked. A short breath and a jerky little nod. The smallest of tells, but he’d already seen it. He’d _hurt_ her.

He dipped his chin at that, unable to hold those eyes any longer in front of him. She’d snap him in two. He’d been a fool to think this could work.

He felt warmth bloom through his skin where her hand touched him then, slender fingers sliding with gentle care along the edge of his jaw. They urged him through touch to look at her and he met an expression that held momentary surprise.

“Grey…” she smiled then and it was everything he thought it’d be. “Your eyes are grey.”

The way she looked at him just then. It was enough to break any guy’s heart.

“Not quite what you’re used to, I’m sure.”

“I’ll get used to it,” she said warmly.

The tight fist that existed around his heart lessened its grip ever so slightly.

“The others...everybody here, they’ve been trying to help me fill in the blanks,” he started awkwardly. “But, I’m still missing a lotta the pieces. Hope you don’t mind, I’m just...uh…”

“Doctor Amari told me,” she said quietly. “It doesn’t matter, Nick. We’ll work it out.”

He tried to swallow the lump in his throat, but it was stuck and choking him. 

“I don’t even know your last name,” he admitted shamefully. 

Her shoulders rose and fell with her breaths now. If he didn’t know any better, he’d swear she was as nervous as he was. The whole room seemed to be holding a breath.

She extended a hand from the blanket.

“Connolly. Nora Connolly.”

 _Connolly._ Not Hancock. Not Deacon. It sounded wrong to his ears. It felt like a lie.

“Connolly?” He took her hand in his and tried to keep from shaking.

“I think you might have known my brother,” she nodded. “He worked for the Bugle before the war.”

He felt the first piece fall into place.

“You’re Buster Connolly’s little sister,” The words came to him easily as recognition flooded through. He hadn’t let go of her hand. “I, ah, jeez. I’m truly sorry for what happened to your brother.” 

Even as he said it, he could tell the other people still standing behind her were confused. It hit him quickly when he saw Piper shrug at Hancock and John shook his head. They didn’t know.

In that one sentence, she’d given him a huge piece of herself and a memory that could only belong to him. 

Buster Connolly had been a reporter for the Boston Bugle. A funny sort of guy with a quick smile and a joke always ready to fly. Quite a bit like Deacon, now that he thought on it. He’d been writing on crime in the city for years before Nick had come to town. He’d cracked several racketeering deals wide open with little more than a typewriter and a front page article on the morning edition. He’d even helped in the take down of Eddie Winter’s right hand stab man, Arthur Black. 

Nick had _known_ Buster. They’d met a handful of times at the station during Operation Winter’s End and even had drinks together one evening after Winter had sent him a holotape mocking an article he’d written on the mob’s involvement with the Monorail deal.

They’d found Buster at the bottom of the river a month later. He was sporting a pair of cement shoes and had a copy of his last article on the Southside Gang’s takedown caught in his throat. Nick had even attended his funeral and there, he was _sure_ , he’d shaken hands with Nora.

Her entire family had left the city after that. Widmark shuffled them to a couple of different suburbs to the north past Concord. They’d been afraid Buster wouldn’t be the only Connolly they’d go after--the Southside Gang was notorious for taking out whole families as a lesson to the community.

There was no way she could know what she’d just given him, unless she’d really, truly known his synth self. It wasn’t a happy memory, but she’d just given him a connection back to her in a way only he and she could truly appreciate. Nick wanted to believe she’d done it on purpose.

“Buster was a good man,” he echoed what he knew he’d have said to her back then, in that receiving line.

“It was a long time ago,” she nodded after a pause. “But, thank you all the same.”

He realized with some awkwardness that he was still holding her hand. Feeling like an idiot, he tried to pull back, but she clasped it fully now and pulled, leading him back towards the others.

It wasn’t a passionate declaration after all they’d suffered through the last few weeks, but it was acceptance in a way he hadn’t expected. She didn’t let go once they’d rejoined the group and when they all retired to an alcove lined with chairs and couches, laughing and breaking out a myriad of glasses and a bottle of Carrington’s bourbon, she sat beside him and John Hancock, replacing her hand with the length of her thigh against his own. 

Sometime later that night, as Deacon, Piper and MacCready had recounted the story of how they’d dug him out of the ice and everyone had had a great laugh at his gruff demeanor when he’d first stepped out into this brave new world, she sat back against the couch with the last glass of bourbon and the blanket slipped down her shoulders. There, threaded through a thin leather strap around her neck, the silver ring from Deacon’s pocket rested against her collarbone.

Nick wasn’t sure what to make of it at first, but when she’d polished off her glass and leaned into his side, he didn’t much care. She wasn’t reaching for anyone but him right now and for all Nick knew, it’d belonged to the husband she’d lost and this was how she wore it all the time. The simple explanation was that Deacon was just holding it for her, probably lost when they’d gotten in the fight out on the street. But no matter how he rationalized it, the ring still bothered him all the same. 

As the hour grew late, the number of people in the alcove dwindled, until even John Hancock stood up, bending over to peck Nora on the cheek in a friendly kind of way, before shuffling off to find a bed.

It’d been the first time Nick had been alone with Nora in what felt like ages. And never when she’d been awake.

They sat up like that, just the two of them for a while. Her head rested on his shoulder and her hand had slid into his, threading their fingers and rubbing the back of his hand with her thumb. It was a long while before they said anything, but Nick felt so at peace with it all, he found he didn’t much care.

“Penny for your thoughts,” she’d finally asked, the question low and soft.

“Thought we were on the caps system nowadays,” he chuckled. 

“That’s true,” she conceded. “You’ve just been quiet.”

“Is that unusual?” A tinge of worry colored his voice. He didn’t want to be different than what she was used to right now.

“No,” she shook her head against the white of his shirt. “Just means you’re thinking.”

The way she said that...like it was just something she _knew._ He sighed and took a chance, resting his lower cheek against her crown.

“You know, I had so many questions I wanted to ask when you woke up. And now that you’re here...I can’t think of a damn thing to say.”

“Never thought I’d live to see the day when Nick Valentine didn’t have a comeback ready,” she laughed. She could laugh at him everyday for the rest of their lives. He loved that sound.

“Maybe...maybe he just doesn’t know what to say to the woman who almost died to save his life,” the words slipped out before Nick could think on them. They were the most honest he had. 

“You’ll figure it out, Nick,” she murmured after a moment. “I happen to know you’re a pretty great detective.”

He squeezed her hand. She squeezed his back.

“Just don’t do it again,” he breathed out against her hair. “Memory or not, the idea of you not getting back up on account of me...I don’t like it.”

She shook her head against his arm.

“I’d do it again in a heartbeat,” she confessed. He knew she meant it, too.

He didn’t know what to say to that. The quiet came back over them and they sat there, hand in hand. Just breathing. His watch ticked softly in the still air.

“Hey, Valentine.”

He closed his eyes in response and let the wave of longing flood back though him. She was singing his love song again.

“Something I can do?”

Her breath caught. He thought he’d said something wrong.

“Stick around this time,” she finally whispered.

She tightened her hold on his hand and he could feel her shoulders give a little quake. She was shivering.

“I’ll try, Doll,” he let his lips press against her crown. “I promise, I’ll try.”

Nick woke sometime later. He couldn’t remember falling asleep.

He wasn’t laying on his couch in the other alcove. He was still sitting propped up on the couch he and Nora had been chatting on earlier. He shifted as his muscles began to wake with his mind. His side was cold. Nora was gone. 

He stretched and blinked the remaining sleep from his head, looking at his watch through the dim light of the common room. A little past 4:30. Still early.

Nick’s legs groaned in protest as he got to his feet. His trench coat slid off him to the floor. Odd, he hadn’t been wearing it at the party earlier. He got the notion someone had covered him with it. He was learning quickly who that someone might be. 

Quiet as he could manage, he poked around the common room, looking for where she’d gotten off to. It was an odd sort of thing to be doing at nearly five in the morning. Common sense told him she’d probably gone off to her own bed when he’d fallen asleep sitting there on the couch. It was unreasonable to expect she’d stay with him all night. Still...he looked for her, just to be sure.

She wasn’t in any of the alcoves, nor had she gone back to the hospital bed. As he went to check the back passage, however, a light, deep in P.A.M’s room caught his eye. He shifted closer to the doorway. And he saw her.

Nora sat in a tall chair beside the table in the center of the room, knees to her chest and chin resting on her knees. Her blanket was pulled high around her shoulders and clasped together in one hand. The other was holding the one good hand of Nick’s other body.

He remained in the doorway a long moment, just watching her. She didn’t say anything. Didn’t move. Barely breathed. She just held his hand and stared at him, committing him to memory as he’d once done with her, when she’d still been asleep in the other room. 

He’d been so worried about how she’d react to him, Nick, in _this_ body, that he’d never considered what it would be like for her to see his synth body lying there like _that_ on the table. For all they knew that he’d been the same person split between two houses, it didn’t change the fact that it _felt_ like a loss. He might someday be _her_ Nick Valentine again, but until his memories came back, he was just _a_ Nick Valentine. 

Her Nick would always be dead on that table, until they could find a way to resurrect him behind a pair of grey eyes.

For a moment, Nick considered turning back. The ache in his chest was unbearable seeing her sitting there holding a hand that had once been his. And still, he felt like an intruder.

He wasn’t sure in that moment what her Nick Valentine would have done. What _he_ would have done in that body if he’d found her staring down the barrel of a loss that haunted her in the night.

Nick knew what he would do now, however.

Easing himself off the wall, he padded down the ramp way and over to her side. She startled when she finally saw him and he kicked himself for not announcing himself better, but he stopped short of an apology when he’d taken a good look at her face.

She’d been crying.

“I...I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I just…”

“You don’t ever have to apologize to me, Doll,” his hand rose and cupped her cheek in a gentle caress. He sighed as he stroked her skin; his fingers trailing up to her hair, brushing the dark strands that had fallen forward back and behind her ear, before trailing their length with his thumb and forefinger, until his knuckle ghosted over her collarbone, just beside the ring.

“Nick…” she breathed in tiny hitched, her eyes closing against his caress. He wasn’t sure what he’d done, but each time he repeated the trail with his fingers, she leaned into hand like a lifeline.

“We’ll figure it out,” he murmured. “I promise, I’m not going anywhere. I’m still here. Everything else...it’s all just time and details.”

His arms slid around her shoulders as she opened the edge of the blanket, drawing him into her embrace. The ache in his chest swelled as he held her, offering words of comfort and reassurance as he could feel her tears flow and wet through to his chest. It wasn’t the way he’d imagined their first embrace, but as he stood there holding her, one of her hands gripped into the back of his shirt and the other holding onto the hand of the man she’d known as Nick Valentine; it felt appropriate.

Whatever they had been, whatever they’d be now, here in this room, they were still just Nick and Nora: A couple of antiques who had slept through the end of the world and were left standing together in the space between an end of one life and the beginning of another.


	12. His Smoke from her Lungs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just wanted to say: I am sorry I haven't responded to comments yet. I am reading them and I can't say thank you enough for the support, I'm just cranking out the new chapters as fast as I can type them. Thanks for your patience!

They stayed at Railroad HQ for another night.

By breakfast, no one would ever know that Nick and Nora had spent the early morning hours in P.A.M’s room. As tired as Nick was sure they both looked when people began filing in and gathering to eat in the alcove from the previous evening, no one commented on it. Nora seemed subdued, her voice sounding in low and quiet tones as she discussed plans for the trip home with Preston and Piper.

But pressed against him as she was on the couch, Nick could feel her body had relaxed. He’d be lying to say he didn’t feel a bit of elation each time she reached for him or sat by his side. He was in a constant state of anticipation when she was around, electricity dancing just beneath his skin and in the surrounding air as she hovered close at hand. He wasn’t sure how she’d react to him upon waking from the medbay, but he’d never expected this. Each time he expected her to draw away, she closed the distance between them instead. She seemed to be trapped in his gravity, always instigating a gentle touch with her hand or a connection at their knees.

He supposed it was just her way of reassuring herself he was actually there. In time, he imagined she’d drift back to whatever constituted as their usual distance in this world, once she was satisfied he wasn’t some kind of illusion a moment from dusting of the man she’d known. He wasn’t looking forward to that time, much as he ought to be for her sake. His body craved her constant contact. It grounded him in a way he hadn’t expected and he reveled in it.

Doc Carrington wasn’t pleased that Nora planned to head back to Diamond City so soon after waking, however, and straight after breakfast, he’d ushered her back into the makeshift medical bay with Curie and Doctor Amari for a barrage of tests. The loss of her touch was immediate and for the first time in days, Nick felt uncomfortable again in his own skin. Much as he hoped she’d return soon, the doctors kept her to themselves straight through the morning hours and into the afternoon.

Surprisingly, Hancock did not go with them. John scoffed at the idea, adamant that Nora was was in the clear so far as the chems were concerned. Anything he couldn’t fix, the stimpaks had taken care of.

“Couple of scars ain’t gonna keep her sittin’ still,” he snorted. “She’s built settlements and wrestled yao guai with more slugs in her than that.”

Nick wasn’t sure he wanted to know that story at the present, much as it amused John.

“Headin’ back to Goodneighbor today,” he told Nick casually, passing him a cigarette before lighting his own. “Gotta get back to the ol’ mayoral duties. They ain’t used to me bein’ out on the road so much anymore. Don’t want ‘em gettin’ soft without me.”  


Nick chuckled and took a long drag off his own smoke. The nicotine trickled pleasantly through his nerves, easing some of the calm Nora had taken with her back into his system.

“Hear you’re headed back to Diamond City in the morning,” Hancock smirked, but Nick knew him well enough now to hear the concern hidden beneath. “Won’t be so bad. It’s less of a shithole now than it was a few years back. Still a lot of upper crust assholes stinkin’ up the place, but there’s a lotta good people on the ground. Won’t take long to get your feel for it again.”

“Let’s hope not,” Nick agreed, thoughtfully. “It’s a pretty poor thing for a detective not to know his way around.”

“Just time and details, man. Just time and details,” his mottled hand patted Nick’s knee. “Take it as it comes and don’t worry about the rest. You’ll be back to chasing lowlives to my doorstep in no time.”

John doused his spent butt into an empty can of water.

“When you’re back on your feet, you and Nora stop by sometime. We’ll have a drink down at the Third Rail on me,” he stood then, extending his hand. “Whatever happens, you’re always welcome in Goodneighbor, Nick. 

Nick stood and took his hand firmly. 

“I appreciate it, John,” he smiled. “You’re a good man. I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done.”

“Ain’t ever gotta thank me for that, brother,” he shook his head. “You and Nora are family. Always have been, always will be.”

They parted ways then, John slipping behind the curtain and barking at Carrington to lay off Nora before he killed her with boredom. Nick heard her laugh as the good doctor got into it with the mayor. He had a feeling Nora’s examination would be over sooner than later now.

He heard the ghoul say his goodbyes to the woman in the other room. Heard their soft murmurings and more laughter. Heard the quiet rustling of cloth against cloth and knew without needing to see it that Nora had pulled him into her embrace. When they pulled back, Nick heard the hitch in the other man’s voice when he told her he’d see her around sometime and called her _Sunshine_.

John slipped out from the curtain again, big, leather black doctor’s bag in hand and with a clever tip of his tricorne hat to Nick, he disappeared through the front entrance of HQ, and was gone.  


Nick sat there a long while, watching the doorway. He was going to miss John Hancock.

The hours ticked by on his watch and Nora ended up not being the only one subjected to the doctors. Amari had cornered him in the early afternoon and, along with a game of twenty questions, she put him through another round of brain scans.

He remembered a little more of Amari now. He knew they’d had a good rapport between them in this time and that she’d tried to help him adjust to memories he once thought had belonged to a separate man. He liked the doctor, much as she fussed over him like a little mother sending her boy off to his first day of classes.

“If the memories refuse to come back on their own,” she told him, with a pat on his arm. “There’s still the option of using the Memory Den as part of your therapy. I would caution against pursuing that as a solution too early, however. It could do more damage than good if your brain is still working out the data. I’d prefer not to jumble the information any further, unless we have to.”

“I’ll keep it in mind, Doc,” he shook her hand. “And thanks, again. You’ve been one in a million.”

“I am always glad to help, Nicholas,” she smiled. “Just remember, when you get to Diamond City, take things slow. I imagine you’ll be in for quite a culture shock and some of the stories you may hear there will be unfiltered. We’ve tried our best to ease you back into your life here slowly, but there are still details you’re not aware of yet that I’d rather you remember on your own.”

“That bad, huh?” He wondered honestly. He’d known Amari and the others hadn’t given him all the pieces of his life while he’d been here. 

“No, not at all. Quite the opposite, in fact,” Amari said warmly. “But there are personal things about your life if I just told to you, you’d have no context for and that could be quite a shock. As the knowledge and feelings comes back to you from your previous time, you can decide what you wish to do with them from there.”

Nick hadn’t been prepared for that answer.

“I’ll, uh, I’ll keep that in mind,” he said quietly. “Thanks, doc.”

Nick contemplated her words a long while after, until Deacon appeared before him with Nora in tow. She looked like she’d had a shower and while she still wore the jeans and Deacon’s t-shirt, she was sporting a short leather jacket now he thought looked just about right on her.

“See, I told ya Charmer, right where you left him,” Deacon grinned broadly. “Me and Nick were going to go out hunting for that Albino Deathclaw you keep telling me about, but we figured we’d save that excitement for another day.”

“Liar,” she chuckled and kissed his cheek before he waggled his brows at her and skipped off towards P.A.M’s room. Their hands had held until they broke from distance and it seemed a playful kind of thing you might see kids do.

“Have fun, you two!” Deacon called back before he disappeared across the room.

“Crazy man” Nora shook her head, still looking in his direction before turning back to Nick. She seemed more alive than he’d seen her previously and he thought Deacon might have something to do with the change in her spirits. There was an impish look about her now and while Nick liked it, he knew in his heart she would be trouble. 

“Doc pronounce you still livin’?” He asked finally, suddenly nervous again in her presence.

“Right as rain,” she flexed her hands in a small and open gesture at herself. “Feel like going outside for a bit?”

“Thought we weren’t leaving till morning,” he watched her as she waited for him. There was a hopeful look there.

“Just to sit for a while,” she assured him, extending her hand towards him. “I feel like I haven’t seen the sky in ages.”

“In your case, that’s not untrue,” he chuckled and took her hand. The electricity was immediate. “Shall we...get a move on then?”

The smile she graced him with in that moment was brilliant. Nick wasn’t sure what it was he’d said, but he’d do it again if only to keep that look on her face.

They fell quiet as she helped Nick to his feet and, much like that morning, she didn’t allow for any distance to grow between them. Looping her arm through his, she led him up and out the front passageway from HQ. They passed through the church and stepped out into the late afternoon sun.

Nora stopped at the top of the stairs, closed her eyes and breathed in. A balmy breeze swept through and caught hold of her hair, pulling the dark strands playfully around her contented expression. It was a silly thing, to be jealous of that breeze, but Nick felt it all the same.

“Not much of a homebody, I’d imagine,” Nick said warmly as she pulled him to sit with her on the top stair. 

“You’d be surprised,” she shook her head. “I spend enough time on the road. When I get home, there’s nowhere I’d rather be.”

“From all the stories I’ve heard, you’re quite the busy woman,” he chuckled, trying to distract himself from the weight of her palm against his. “With all you’ve done out there, can’t imagine why you’d give it all up for a quiet life in the city.”

It was a leading question and they both knew it.

“I wouldn’t trade my life there for anything in the world,” she said and the words came out wistfully. “Besides, it was a good time to retire. I spent my first few years here living for everyone else. Maybe it’s selfish, but when it was all said and done, I wanted something for myself.”

“That’s not selfish,” Nick said quietly, struck by the familiarity of her words. “You know, I used to have a little apartment down by the waterfront off of Monroe and Third. Wasn’t much to look at, but it was mine. Had a big bay window off the living room I liked to sit and read in during the mornings. Seemed like the only quiet space in the city some days, but it gave me a place to think and watch the world go by.”

Nick wondered if his old apartment was still there, on the other side of the river. He doubted the big bay window existed anymore. Probably was destroyed like all the rest when the bombs fell.

He felt her gentle squeeze of his hand.

“Hey, Valentine,” she was studying him with those baby blues of hers. “How are you?”

He wanted to tell her how her words always seemed to affect him. How she’d mistaken his name for a love song each time she said the letters. It seemed like such a small and inconsequential thing in the scheme of their troubles, but he wanted to ask her to keep calling for him in that way of hers until he found his way back to her again.

“I’m...getting by,” he finally sighed, taking a cigarette out of pocket and fishing for the lighter. If ever he needed a smoke, it was now. “Things come to me in pieces. A flash of memory here a bit of knowledge there, but nothing really of consequence. The big important parts haven’t sorted themselves out yet and I’m kinda tired of waiting for them.”

He lit the tobacco and took a drag, letting the smoke filter out of his lungs in a long contemplative path. 

“Amari says it’s just a matter of time. That I’ll run into things that’ll trigger it and someday it’ll all come rushing back in. Til’ then, I’m stuck in this crazy limbo where I can’t even remember my own partner. Pretty sad state of affairs, I guess.”

The ache in his chest was back again and this time, Nick greeted it like an old friend. He was used to it at this point. Might have to be used to it for the rest of his life.

“Anything I can do to help?”

He turned to find her watching him again. Waiting. 

“I...uh...I dunno,” he swallowed, trying to find the words. “It just sort of happens, y’know? Somebody’ll do something or I’ll hear something and sometimes that makes a spark. Anything you do I might recognize?”

She looked at him a long hard minute, a thought just behind her eyes. 

“Maybe.”

She let go of his hand in favor of his wrist, urging his arm up and around her shoulders as she scooted closer to him until their hips were touching. His hand tightened around her leather-clad arm; he couldn’t help it. She looked at him then--really looked at him--and as she leaned closer, he thought she might kiss him.

He thought he might like that.

He watched her arm reach across his lap. She caught hold of his other wrist by the trench coat and tugged. He let her lead his hand up to her mouth, before her lips slipped over the filter and she took a drag off his cigarette. When she was done, she leaned back and arched her neck, letting his smoke swirl out of her lungs in one smooth breath.

Nick just stared at her as she released her hold on his wrist and his hand gracelessly fell to his lap. She met his gaze expectantly, as if sharing a smoke with him was an everyday thing and not the most intimate act he’d ever witnessed in his life.

“Anything?” She whispered.

“S-sorry...no,” Nick shook his head with a slight jerk.

A sigh escaped the small smile on her lips and she rested her head against his shoulder.

“Worth a try.”

He tightened his hold on her, pressing her closer into his side and letting his cheek lay against her crown. The ache was dull, but persistent as he tried to imagine the memory her action might have brought on, already mourning its loss. He took a deep breath to calm himself, turning his nose to her hair. The sweet scent of soap mixed with the lingering air from his smoke filled his lungs.

Nick’s eyes opened as the feeling in his chest swelled. Tobacco and soap. It was Nora.

_“You always sleep with your trench coat and hat?”_

“W-what?” He startled.

“I didn’t say anything,” she peered up at him, her hand smoothing down his chest in comfort.

“Sorry...for a second there, I thought..,” his voice trailed off. 

“A memory?” She asked quietly.

“Dunno,” he said and it was true. There wasn’t a flash of images this time. Just a feeling and what he’d thought was her voice. It unsettled him as he realized his heart was racing now.

“Nick?”

“Your soap..,” he said absently, before realizing he probably sounded like a loon and trying to salvage what he’d started. “It smells different.”

“Bad different?” She laughed.

“I didn’t say that,” he rubbed his hand the length of her arm. “Just not the stuff I’ve been showering with.”

“It’s not,” she smiled up at him. “It’s mine, from my bag. I made it.”

“A woman who can save the world and make her own soap,” he chuckled. “Is there anything you can’t do?”

“Do you not like it?” She was still teasing him, but there was a real question in her eyes. Just a little bit like worry.

“I didn’t say that, either,” he pulled her closer again, burying his nose into her hair. “I like it just fine. It’s just that it’s...familiar.”

“I guess I won’t change it out then.”

“Don’t you dare,” he gathered her to him as she laughed, breathing deep of the scent again.

It was a comforting thing that soap. Another piece of the puzzle, no matter how small, he could solve. They settled again soon after, though Nick kept his cheek resting against her hair, breathing in as if trying to memorize the scent of her soap over and over again. Propriety was tugging at him that he was too close and too casual with his partner right now, even as she hummed and played with his tie. Nick wanted to ignore it. He favored the distance they had now, over what might come later.

He didn’t want to think of later. He could live on this church step with her forever. He didn’t want to think this was just a momentary lapse of her judgement, that it was just some leftover from their near death experiences she’d leave behind some day. He had to know.

“Say,” he choked on the word as it finally slipped out. “Can I, uh. Can I ask you a question?”

“Anything,” she said and though he couldn’t see her eyes just then, he knew she meant it.

His breath went shallow. He was sure she could feel his heart beating through his chest unevenly. He’d take the gamble.

“Were we always this close?” His words were air.

“Define always,” she said quietly.

An odd response. He thought on his words carefully.

“Was it like this between us before,” he finally said. “Or is this something new?”

“Always,” she let the word slip. 

Nick breathed a little easier at that.

“Is that alright with you?” He felt her back stiffen ever so slightly. She began to pull away. “Sorry, I...I can tone things down a bit.”

He stopped her before she could break from his arm and scooted back towards her until their hips were back in alignment. 

“I don’t think I’d like that,” Nick shook his head with a smile. “ But thanks, all the same.”

She relaxed against him and as comfortable as holding her had been before, there’d still been a tension under her skin he hadn’t noticed until that moment when it released. A funny thought occurred to Nick just then. He’d spent so many hours worrying that she might reject him, he’d never considered she might feel the same.

They sat together on the stairs until long after the stars came out, talking about both the old world and the new. He learned she’d been a defense lawyer once upon a time, a career she’d had to give up when her family moved up to Concord after the death of her brother. She told him how they’d stayed out of the public eye, her mother planning on opening a new clinic and returning to her work as a doctor once the Southside Gang business died down. Nora had met and married a man newly home from the war, named Nate. The way she’d told it, he’d dogged her every day when she’d stop by a little coffee shop in the afternoons down in Concord. She’d finally conceded to a date on account of his sense of humor and persistence. Nick could tell that she’d loved him, but it didn’t sound like the kind of passionate romance he’d expected of her for some reason. Her favorite word for him seemed to be “idiot” as she described his antics with a tone in her voice that said she’d found them amusing in the same breath she’d wanted to strangle him. The man hadn’t been much of a romantic, but what he lacked in nuance, he’d made up for in candor.

Nate had been good to her, and brought a different light to the dark world she’d experienced in the city. She said it’d been nice and Nick knew exactly what she’d meant. He’d felt the same way about Jenny back in the day. 

She and Nate had a kid together not long before the war, which apparently sent Nate over the moon. He’d been the type of guy who’d waited a lifetime for fatherhood and it was funny to hear her describe the kinda stuff the man would get up to after Shaun had been born. Nora had been looking forward to returning to law after a long year away, but the sirens ended that dream as quickly as it started. And despite outrunning the bombs, she’d still lost her family down in that Vault.

Nick knew what her son had become after a night’s worth of talking with Hancock, but the way Nora spoke on it now, in that wistful, but accepting way of hers, she didn’t regret any of her actions. She’d buried her family like she’d once had to bury her brother and, though it had taken some time to get through, she’d been determined not to let any of it kill the light off in her. 

Though he couldn’t remember it, Nick had apparently been beside her through it all. Much like John, Nora spoke candidly about their time together. They’d met in that incident he’d had with Skinny Malone’s boys and stood together under the rain falling out of a midnight sky after. He asked a lot of questions about her first impressions of him in that moment, but if he didn’t know better, he’d never have guessed she was speaking about a guy who, for all intents and purposes, was a mechanical man.

She called him her lifeline and for a while, he was the only thing keeping her together. It wasn’t long until they’d passed the bar of friendship and he’d left Diamond City behind to continue walking by her side long after their professional relationship came to an end. She confessed in the same breath she’d always been scared of the day they’d part ways and he’d head back home to continue the detective business, content to adventure no more. Eventually that time came to pass and while she’d traveled the Commonwealth with a handful of others, she always returned to Diamond City. Just made sense to make her home there when the war was said and done.

She’d become his partner after that when he’d made the offer one night in some dive called the Dugout Inn and they’d been together ever since. 

It took a lot of the mystery out of why she’d done it, though Nick still couldn’t imagine he’d ever try to tie a person like Nora to one place; until she told him about Eddie Winter. 

The damn bastard _had_ managed to survive the bombs and while it boiled him to no end, there was a funny kind of justice in knowing he’d spent 200 years trapped in a room with his skin falling off. She walked him through the case as if he’d been there, in this body rather than the other one, and reassured him that when Winter met his end, it was Nick’s bullet that was the cause of it. 

For all she spoke about what Nick had done for her, he knew she’d followed him through his own personal hell and walked him out the other side. He didn’t know how he could ever thank her for that and he wished he could remember it.

When they finally retired for the night, he hesitated. They’d spent so many hours up until then connected at the hip, that the knowledge he’d be without her for awhile didn’t sit well. It was a silly thing to get anxious over, but as he thought about returning to his own lonely alcove in search of sleep, he realized then that he’d _miss_ her. 

“Well, I,” he started, feeling the creep of embarrassment across his cheeks. He still held her hand lightly in his own, willing himself to let go. “I, ah, guess this is goodnight for now. Had a real swell time up there with you today. We should do it again.”

“Your place or mine?” Her lips broke into a broad and teasing grin. Jesus, that was a sharp one. He wondered if this dame would ever stop surprising him.

“A-ha...careful, Doll,” he fumbled only a moment before he caught his composure. “Keep talking like that and you’ll give a guy ideas.”

That grin turned into a genuine smile. He’d said something again.

“Goodnight, Mister Valentine,” she leaned up on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his cheek, giving his hand an affectionate squeeze, before she skipped past him into the dark of the other room.

Nick stood there for a long time after. She might as well have branded him. Might’ve burned less than that _kiss._

Sleep was slow to come after that and Nick spent the time replaying their conversation in his head, knowing he was sporting a ridiculous grin the whole while and grateful for the dark that would hide it. Hancock hadn’t been lying. Nora could toss a zinger as well as she caught them. He’d have to be careful with that one.

The couch felt strangely too big tonight and he felt oddly cold, despite the pleasant temperature of HQ. As Nick finally drifted off to sleep he went through their conversation one last time.

He could have sworn they’d had one just like it before.


	13. New Man, Same Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just wanted to say: I am sorry I haven't responded to comments yet. I am reading them and I can't say thank you enough for the support, I'm just cranking out the new chapters as fast as I can type them. Thanks for your patience!
> 
> Updates might be every 1-2 days. I'm back to work now after a short holiday and it's cutting into my time. I'll try to keep the chapters posting as often as possible though.

Nick woke late, feeling like a new man. 

He’d had a different dream last night and an odd one at that. He'd dreamed about a quilt. Just a quilt, sitting on the end of a double sized bed.

He wanted to laugh. He wondered what Doc Amari would think of that one. She’d probably think he’d gone round the bend.

There was a queer sort of excitement to the air today. For all the others had told him about Diamond City, it never actually occurred to him that he’d be going there again someday. It was just a place from his other life, a fact to be stored away for later. Now, he couldn’t wait to see it.

Not that he had anything against HQ. There was a certain charm about the place, being tucked away beneath the Old North Church, surrounded by friendly faces and passing the days where the rest of the world couldn’t find you. There was a warmth to the place; which, all things considered, was a strange thing to say about an old catacomb. The people here were good people, however, and they’d given him something he’d never thought he’d have again after they’d freed him from that cooler. Nick Valentine had been given a new lease on life. 

It was strange now to think back to his days before the war. He couldn’t remember why he’d avoided living for so long. He’d had his apartment and his books and his job--a job he’d been damn good at--and for a while, he’d even had Jenny. He’d always thought it’d been enough. At the time, it _had_ been enough. But, now?

Now, he knew otherwise. Before, he’d been surviving on a routine. He worked when he worked, he slept when he slept, and when Jenny called him up to go dancing, he went, because that’s just what was expected of him. He’d made small talk and he’d drank his coffee at the same time everyday and he’d kept the rest of the world always at an arm’s length away, because everything was safer from a distance. Nick may have been a personable guy, but he never let anything get personal. and much as he liked playing the numbers, he’d been of the firm opinion that attachments only led to loss. Better to keep things simple. 

The more you had, the more you had to lose, and all that.

Living with the people at HQ had been an eye-opening experience, to say the least. He didn’t doubt any one of them wouldn’t live and die for the others if given the option. They’d closed the distance on him before he’d even knowing what their game was, and any walls he might have erected never had the chance to form. He had friends now, and not just the acquaintances you might say good morning to on the way in to work, but real pals to call on to share a drink with and talk about the stuff that mattered.

He had a life waiting for him in Diamond City. His own agency, with his own office, and a neon sign out front that was a real eyesore according to what Piper said was the popular opinion around town. It was the kind of thing he’d dreamed about, but never acted upon; back in his days with the Chicago PD after one too many arguments with the D.A over a case he could have closed wrapped in a Christmas bow, if only he’d gone independant. 

And he had Nora.

A real partner of his own choosing, not some assignment between strangers. She knew him inside and out, would have his back when things went sideways, and would be there afterwards to celebrate another job well done with more than just a shake of a hand and a “See you round the lunchroom, someday”. She was the best damn friend a guy could ask for, literally leading him by the hand while he sorted his way through the new Commonwealth. 

And she was gentle with him in a way that sent his heart into back flips.

He’d never known anyone like Nora before. With a soft voice full of smoke and a spine made of steel, who always reached out when anyone else might’ve pulled away. She talked with Nick like he mattered, looked at him like he wasn’t just some headcase shamus-on-the-streets from another time. A guy like him was lucky to have her; a girl who offered him all of her time when she had every right to deny him the hour. He already thought the world of her, memories or no: She was clever and brave and every kind of wonderful. Nick thought he could handle just about anything, with her by his side.

And then she’d kissed him; and God, she made him hope...hope for a lotta things in this new life. He’d been so afraid of everything he’d had to lose, but now, Nick could only see the things he might gain. He’d been given another chance at knowing a life and he didn’t plan on wasting it.

He couldn’t wait to get to Diamond City.

But first, he needed to get up.

Stretching his arms high above his head, Nick took a deep and cleansing breath, before swinging his legs to the floor. Gathering his small collection of things, he pocketed the smokes and lighter from Piper and said his final goodbyes to the couch. Desdemona and Michael were still sitting with the remains of their breakfast in the social alcove and MacCready was nearby, cleaning his rifle in preparation for their departure. He and Cait were headed to Sanctuary, while Preston and Piper would be joining them for the walk to Diamond City. It saddened Nick a little to see the Railroad group part ways. He felt like he’d lived more in the last few weeks than he had in all the rest of his years combined...and he’d had quite a life before the bombs.

Nick sat and chatted with Mother and son as they passed him a plate and he wondered where Nora had gotten off to. His watch read 10:15, quite a bit later than he’d been expecting them to leave. He wondered why she hadn’t woken him, but thought Doctor Amari might have told her about the insomnia and so, she’d let him sleep. When he’d finished with breakfast, and had accepted a drawing of himself in his coat and hat sleeping on the couch from Michael with a thanks and a ruffle of his hair, Nick headed to the back for a quick shower and a shave. 

He whistled along to The Ink Spots as they sang _Maybe_ on Diamond City Radio in the other room, as he knotted his tie. When he was finished, he caught a glimpse of himself in the small mirror and after a moment, he loosened the tie again and undid the top two buttons of his shirt. He would never have gone to the station with his tie hanging so low, but it looked odd to him now to be all done up. It looked bed worn this way and just a little more like what the detectives in the old pulp films put on, but he liked it. For some reason, it felt right.

Sliding into his trench coat, he straightened out the collar and slid his dark fedora smartly atop his hair. His nodded once at his reflection and left the shower room feeling satisfied. Nick Valentine was finally ready to face the brave new world out there.

On his way back, Nick realized that Science Team Quadruple Backflip, or whatever their new name was this morning, were all standing out in the common room, rather than in P.A.M’s lab. Doctor Amari sat with Madison Li, while Wallace and Tom quietly talked to their side. Amari was smiling and chatting with Doctor Li, but Nick got the distinct impression she’d been crying by the small bit of cloth she held tightly in her fingers.

It was then that he’d noticed Deacon standing guard by P.A.M’s doorway. 

“Hey, looking good, Mister Valentine! Ready for your big trip to the Great Green Jewel?” he grinned.

“As ready as I’ll ever be. Can’t say I won’t miss this place,” Nick smiled in return. “HQ has been good to me these past few weeks. Though, I’m sure you’ll be glad to get the couch back.”

“Nah, it’s yours anytime. Don’t be a stranger,” Deacon shrugged. He pulled something out of his pocket then, tossing the object to Nick. “Here, you’ll probably want these for when you hit the city.”

What Nick caught turned out to be a set of two keys, attached at the ring to a small black leather heart.

“Thanks,” he pocketed them, before realizing they must have belonged to his other body. “Say, you seen Nora around?”

“She’s...taking a moment,” Deacon tilted his head towards P.A.M’s room.

“Oh,” it was all Nick could say. Now that he thought on it, he’d never considered what they might do with his remote body. Kinda morbid to just leave it lying around.

“It’s alright, Deacon,” he heard her voice suddenly from inside the room.

“Go on,” Deacon nodded. “Might help.”

Nick wasn’t sure if Deacon had meant Nora or himself at that comment, but he tipped his hat in thanks and wandered inside.

She was standing by the table, waiting for him. He thought she looked stronger today, all things considered. There was a little more color in her cheeks and and some of the fragility she’d held the last two days was gone. Hancock was right; a few scars weren’t enough to keep her down. She looked resolved and with the pistol at her hip and the short leather jacket, he could see a little of the General she’d once been peering out at him now.

Nick tried to smile as he approached, feeling more than a little nervous being here again. As he neared her, however, she reached out to take his hand and Nick’s anxiety faded as their fingers entwined. 

“Sure you want me here?” He said quietly.

“Stay with me,” she nodded. 

“Always,” he promised and pulled her into his side. 

His synth body still lay out on the card tables as it had been this whole time, but the hole in his gut was no longer on display. Someone had dressed him in a new button down shirt and while the old trench coat still bore some of the black coolant stains, it wasn’t as traumatic without the wounds to match. Good hand and bad were folded across the belt of his coat and for all the world, he looked to be asleep. It filled Nick with a deep sense of melancholy to look down at himself now. He hoped now that along with his memories of Nora, he’d also regain memories of himself--his synth self. That body had done his mind a lotta good and now that he looked at it, he couldn’t imagine hating it so much. 

“They’re taking him to Sanctuary,” Nora murmured. “There’s an old gas station out that way. A Red Rocket that I...I used to stay there. I thought it might be nice to...to…”

Nick ran his hand gently down the side of Nora’s arm, giving her time.

“We had a lot of good times there, you and me,” she looked up at him and though her eyes were glassy, she still smiled. “I don’t know, you might have preferred Diamond City, but I thought Red Rocket might be more peaceful. No one would disturb a grave there…”

“I think I’d like the Red Rocket,” and even as he said it, he knew it to be true. A thought crossed his mind then and another piece fell into place. “Damnedest thing. I seem to remember an old quilt there. Dunno why, but I love that quilt.”

Nora laughed at that, the action causing a couple of tears to roll down her cheeks as she did so.

“You remember the quilt, but not the hours we spent making it?” She shook her head.

“It’ll come back to me,” he shrugged and felt her arm go around his waist. “Lotta love for the finished product. I don’t doubt the process of putting it together was anything less than wonderful.”

“You say that now,” Nora tightened her hold on him for a brief moment as she teased. “I’ll remember that come fall, when we have to help make a dozen for the new settlements. You'll get stuck sewing with me for weeks.”

Nick tried to imagine what that might be like. Just him and Nora sitting side by side for hours as they worked. 

“I think I could suffer through it.”

 

He felt her grow still beneath his touch, the air no longer in her lungs. For a moment, he was afraid she hadn’t been as well as he’d been thinking, but then he watched her jaw set and the controlled, but slow intake of breath she managed after.

“You know,” her voice hitched, breaking her silence. “Sometimes you say things and I...I just miss you so much.”

The world fell away at her confession and once again, they were tip-toeing along that precipice where one bad step could break them. Nick was determined to keep their footing. Leaning down, he kissed the top of her head, letting his cheek rest there as the tobacco and soap of her hair said good morning. He felt her sigh. 

And suddenly, he felt grounded.

“I’m standing right beside you, Doll,” he said, his voice a soothing rumble. “Every bit as much as I’m lying on that table. The lights may have gone out on one, but they’re still on and looking at you in the other. The color’s changed, that’s all.”

She laughed at his poor attempt at humor and turned into him. Nick held her as she shook, though if she cried any more tears he wasn’t sure. Her arms were woven around him now, her small fists gripping the material of his shirt as if she were worried he’d disappear if she didn’t hold on tight enough. Nick returned the sentiment, running his fingers through her hair at the nape of her neck and pulling her close until he could feel her heart beating against his chest.

It was a while before she stopped shaking and he felt her relax in weariness against him.

“You alright?” He asked, his tone gentle.

“It’s...stupid,” she shook her head. “It’s just...the hat.”

Nick looked down at the dusty old fedora his synth self still wore. It had miraculously survived the firefight without blood or coolant stains.

“It’s hard to leave behind,” she whispered.

“So take it with you,” he urged.

“I couldn’t do that,” she laughed, though the edge of tears were still present. “I can’t leave him without a hat. It...it wouldn’t be right.”

“True,” Nick agreed. “Clothes make the man, and all that.”

She gave a small, but pained looking laugh. He’d said something again. His thoughts suddenly felt like a minefield.

She wasn’t wrong though. He didn’t like the thought of sending his other self off without a hat. It just felt wrong. 

Nick thought a long moment. He pulled back from her, careful to untangle their limbs without going far. Reaching up, he took the dark, woolen fedora from his own head and carefully exchanged it with the synth’s. He took care to make sure his hat was neatly placed upon his remote body’s head, before setting the dusty fedora upon his own. He tilted the brim just a bit downward and looked up at her.

“How’s that for an even exchange?” He asked seriously.

“Are you...are you sure?” She looked at him in disbelief.

“Gotta lot of fond memories in this hat,” he smiled at her. “Even if I can’t remember them all yet. Seems a shame not to continue wearing it.”

“You..,” she closed her eyes and smiled back, slowly shaking her head. “You never stop surprising me, you know that?”

“I might know the feeling,” he admitted quietly.

They stood for a moment, just looking at one another. He felt like they’d always be trying to find each other again.

“Wanna get movin’?” He asked, his tone low and leaving room for her to decide.

“In a minute,” she gave his hand a squeeze. “I’ll be right behind you.”

“Take all the time you need, Doll,” he let go of her hand and took one last look at his other self.

The clean, dark fedora looked out of place on the synth’s head, as much as the dusty one must look on his own, but for some reason, it pleased Nick. As symbols went, it was a small one, but there was something about exchanging something from one of his bodies to another that made him feel a little more connected to both. He gave the mechanical shell on the table a friendly nod of thanks, thanks for giving his mind another shelter, thanks for helping him build a life, however difficult to remember, in this new world; thanks for holding out through all the hard times and the gunfights and still being fast enough to save Nora.

Nick turned to leave, slowly walking up the ramp way leading out into the common room. When he reached the door to leave, however, a shift in her movement caught out of the corner of his eye and he turned back.

One of Nora’s hands rested lightly over the synth’s now. She stroked his tattered cheek with the other. And then, as if she’d done it a thousand times before; she leaned forward.

And kissed him.

Nick’s breath caught. He watched her from the doorway, unable to turn back away. It wasn’t like the friendly kisses she gave to all her friends. Wasn’t the peck to a cheek she gave Hancock or Deacon, nor was it the silly blown kisses she and Piper shared with a wink across the room. It wasn’t even the kiss she’s pressed against his skin last night that’d burned long after she’d left him.

This kiss was soft and sweet. A feather-light wisp of a thing done with care, that lingered for more than a breath, before it broke. It was the kind of kiss that started lives, that marked farewells, that greeted you in the morning when you were still half-asleep and dreaming. It was a kind of kiss he’d never known.

It looked a lot like _love_.

 

Nora drew back from Nick’s empty body. She’d loved him in this body. Loved him completely and thoroughly and without limitation. He’d become her life in this new world, the air she breathed, the ground she walked. And she knew she’d been the same to him. It’s just how things were between them, two hearts in a pair.

_The Valentines._

It saddened her to know she’d never look up to see the glow from those eyes staring down at her again. She’d loved those eyes, different as they were. She hoped he knew that now. Hoped that when he finally remembered her, he’d remember that she’d loved all of him, no matter what form he took.

She’d miss this body for its familiarity. For its shape and for its feel. She’d miss it for the many adventures they’d shared together and the life they’d built under a glowing sign, in the heart of Diamond City.

But she wouldn’t think of him as dead. She couldn’t. Not now.

Her Nick was still alive, and while he looked a little different than what she was used to and couldn’t quite remember their whole history just yet, she knew she loved him all the same. He only saw the differences, she knew, but from that first moment she’d finally seen him in HQ; when he looked at her in panic as if she could break his heart with a thought, she recognized the man she used to know. 

Amari had told her to take it slow. Not to spook him. Memories were one thing, but feelings were more complicated. He had enough to deal with right now without adding a love he couldn’t remember and a wife whose name he didn’t know into the mix. 

Amari said he needed to come to it on his own.

And she’d tried that first afternoon, honestly she did, but her resolve broke a little each time they touched and the need to be close to him was overwhelming. It was still Nick’s voice and still Nick’s face and even the way he moved and smiled; all of those things were the same. She couldn’t pretend at indifference now, couldn’t pretend they were nothing more than friends and partners when she’d known worlds more from him.

She’d been so afraid he’d reject her. When she’d first woken and they’d reassured her he was still alive, just different, she’d cried despite herself. Deacon had held her and John had given her the resolve to trust that the man hadn’t changed, just the form, but when he was standing there in front of her and she knew he couldn’t remember her last name, she’d been scared to take the first step for fear he might look at her and not find the same kind of love a second time.

And yet, he still leaned into her touch. Still held her like his world ended where hers began. Still met her halfway in their caresses with a gentleness hiding the need for more in its shake.

Nora didn’t doubt that Nick still loved her.

It was in his eyes each time she called him, just like it used to be.

He just didn’t have a name for that feeling yet.

And she’d be damned if she ever let him think she didn’t love him. Not again. She knew firsthand how good he’d been at talking himself out of his own heart and this Nick, _her_ Nick, he hadn’t changed. 

Bashful mode wasn’t standard on synths, but it was par for the course with Nick Valentine. No matter what form he came packaged in.

She didn’t expect this battle to be an easy one, but for now she had to keep moving forward. They still had a date to keep and she hoped they could find their way to seven o'clock soon.

Nora smiled down at the body she’d loved for so long. She was ready to say goodbye.

“See you in Diamond City,” she whispered, her fingers smoothing down the collar of her husband’s old coat one last time. “And don’t forget the flowers.”

She lingered only a moment, before willing her hands to lift from that tattered skin she’d once held so dear, and with a deep breath, Nora stepped away.

And as she turned to leave for home with the man who didn’t know she was his wife, she thought she caught the edge of a tan trench coat, as it hurried out the door.

By noon, the small group was ready to depart. They said their goodbyes to their Railroad family and to Cait and MacCready who would be gone in another hour headed North with Nick’s other body in tow. The Minutemen would meet them across the river and they’d be in Concord before dark.

Deacon gave both Nora and Nick giant hugs, reminding them to come and visit more often so they could take up the hunt for an Albino Deathclaw someday soon for his collection. He patted Nick’s shoulder and shook his hand and for once wasn’t lying when he said he was glad Nick was still there. And then he’d taken Nora by the hand one last time and though no words were said, an entire conversation passed in the space of a moment in a language that was entirely their own.

MacCready took the opportunity to shake Nick’s hand, while the others said their farewells.

“You’re a good man, Valentine,” he said, his grip firm and eyes honest. “When you remember me, I hope you might remember that, too.”

“You take care of that kid of yours,” Nick nodded. “Maybe we’ll see you around again soon. Be nice to catch up again.”

MacCready laughed. 

“100 caps says you change your tune.”

“You’re a changed man, Mac,” Valentine shook his head. “I should never have held that against you.”

“When did you..?” MacCready’s eyes were wide as saucers as Nick drew his hand away and tipped his hat.

“Just one of those things like John’s watch, I suppose,” he snorted. It was something to do with the caps. “Still, I was in the wrong. I appreciate all you’ve done for me. You’re a good guy, MacCready. A real good guy.”

As he turned to walk away, MacCready stopped him.

“Hey Nick,” he started, glancing to the side at Amari and crew. “I know this probably won’t mean much coming from me right now, but, I’m glad you’re the one with Nora. And...you should be, too.”

He nodded sharply and jogged over beside Cait, the redhead slapping his shoulder in greeting as they headed back into the Church.

Nick swallowed hard as he watched them go, feeling a burning sensation already rising in his cheeks. He reached into his pocket and fished out his cigarettes, just as Nora returned to his side.

“Nick.”

“Need something?” He coughed and turned with newfound interest in the architecture of a nearby building.

“No,” she watched him as he looked anywhere but towards her. “Nothing. We’re just set to go.” 

“Sure, sure,” he muttered as he bent his head to light his cigarette. Figures, the damn lighter wouldn’t go.

“Here.”

Nora took the lighter from his shaking hands, closed it, opened it again and protected the flame that jumped up from the source with a steady palm. He hesitated just a moment, his grey eyes impossible to read under the shadow of his fedora, before he leaned in and lit his smoke.

“Thanks,” he said quietly.

Nora flicked the lighter closed and slid it into her jeans pocket. Nick realized now he’d have to ask for it back if he wanted another cigarette later. He hoped the road to Diamond City wasn’t a long one.

She waited.

He pulled hard on the drag and when the smoke had filled his lungs, he turned his chin towards the ground and exhaled. For a guy who used to be good at tailing people, he was doing a poor job of playing nonchalant now. He wasn’t fooling anyone.

“Hey, Valentine..,” Nora stepped into the space in front of him, her tone always soft and soothing. 

He cringed against the ache that refreshed itself behind his ribs, when he heard the sweet notes of her song in his name. He wished she wouldn’t call him like that right now. It was all he could do not to listen. He’d pour his heart into her hands if she did. 

And then he’d have nothing left.

“Nick,” she tried again. “You all right?”

“Fine, fine,” he nodded, though he was sure she could see right through him. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

For a moment, he thought she might reach for him, but as her hand approached his arm, he panicked. His body flinched and she withdrew.

A moment.

Then another.

He could see the rise and fall of her chest from beneath the brim of his hat and the momentary tug of a frown. The high sun reflected off the silver at her neck and he turned away before it could blind him.

“You guys coming?” Piper called to them.

“Y-yeah,” Nora called back. Her fingers flexed unsure, before she slid them around the strap of her postman’s bag and walked away from him. She slipped from his down turned view, and Nick caught an eyeful of the rust brown splotches still covering the bag.

His heart jumped.

Jesus, what was he doing?

His feet were moving before he could change his mind.

“Hey, Nora!” He jogged up to her side and noticed more than a little surprise written in those features. She looked wary of him now. God, he’d been an ass. “I...It’s not you, Doll. It’s me. I’m just, I dunno. I think...it’s just nerves is all.”

“About going to the city?” She eyed him as they walked. She kept her hands to her bag.

“Something like that,” he sighed. “I didn’t mean to...look, whatever that was back there, I’m sorry.”

Something in her expression softened, but her guard was still up and might as well been cast in steel. One step forward, two steps back. He wondered if they’d ever find a way through this dance.

“You can talk to me, you know? We’re a team, Nick,” she said quietly. “And I know you don’t quite remember that yet, but I do. I’m here for you. Don’t shut me out where I can’t follow.”

“I know,” he conceded. “Just...trying to process some things.”

“Like what?” She asked, the concern in her voice so honest, it hurt.

“Like everything,” he sounded miserable.

Her hand twitched and then let go of the strap. She held it out tentatively, giving him the chance to reject it if he wanted. Instead, Nick slid his fingers against her own and both released the breath they’d been holding between them. He wanted to tie their wrists together and beg her to not let him trip. Nick felt as if he were suddenly breaking under the pleasant torture of her fingers gripped in his. 

And the cool, hard pressure of her ring made him feel all the worse.

“Hey, we’ll figure it out,” she said, a reassurance to them both, before pulling him towards the others. “I promise. We’ll get there.”

“I sure hope so,” he breathed and followed after her.

His chest pulled when she smiled at him and he was glad when she finally turned away to give him a moment of shadows from her sunlight. He’d lost some of his excitement from earlier in the day over getting back to Diamond City. His mind kept going back to P.A.M’s room in HQ and he felt his cheeks grow hot again.

He’d finally had his first memory of Nora.

And it wasn’t a flash of images or a piece of knowledge or even a sound. There was nothing tangible to it that he could hold onto, just a feeling sparked by watching a kiss to a pair of lips that were no longer his own.

It was _love._

Christ almighty, he _loved_ her.

And he had no idea now what to do.


	14. The Long Way Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long! My writing time is more limited now and I'm trying to make every hour I have count. Edited this morning, so I apologize for errors that may have slipped through!
> 
> I'm also trying to respond to comments if I have time on my lunch break. It's slow going, but I truly appreciate when I hear from you--I probably check comments as often as some people check for updates.
> 
> Hoping for another update late, late tonight or tomorrow. <3

It was a long walk back to Diamond City.

Despite the friendly banter he was able to maintain with the others and Nora’s hand fitted so tightly against his, he’d never felt so miserable in all his life. The place that he’d held so many hopes for just that morning, felt more like a prison now; and as each step brought them closer to the high walls and painted signs of the stadium, Nick felt like a condemned man on his last trek to the chair.

God, he _loved_ her. 

He was _in_ love with her.

And now that that it was standing there, plain as day beside him, he couldn’t take the thought back.

It was just there. A fact. A painful fact. One that had hit him in the same way as Hancock’s watch; it was just something that he knew. Or more specifically; felt.

In that other life, in that other body, he’d _loved_ her.

Of course he’d loved her, how could he not? Nora was an easy woman to love and in that other body, Nick had years upon years to build that feeling up until it burst. They’d been through hell together and back. They’d been friends and partners; had each other’s backs, had each other’s trust. She was clever and brave and all sorts of wonderful and if he hadn’t loved her then, he’d have to be a fool.

But for all he knew now that he’d loved her back then, when he was the other Nick with the torn synth skin and glowing yellow eyes to match, he didn’t have any of the memories to go with it. He was well and truly doomed and not even a call from the Governor could save him now.

The facts were this: Without the memories it was just a feeling. The feeling of another man. And as much as Nick had once been that man, he wasn’t that fella now.

Which made things all the worse.

Because the old Nick, the Nick he’d been in that other body, in that other time, wasn’t the only one that loved her.

Nick, _him_ , the one that was walking and breathing and had taken a 200 year nap in an over-sized cooler, loved her, _too_.

For all that he’d thought of himself and his synth self as being the same person up until now, thought their differences were only defined by a couple of memories he could eventually reclaim until they were two bodies made whole again by one mind; he’d finally found a real difference. One that couldn’t currently be resolved.

It didn’t matter that his old self loved Nora. Didn’t matter if he knew it like the time standing out on his wrist watch. He couldn’t remember any of it and until he did, he couldn’t step into that man’s shoes, couldn’t reclaim that heart as his own without the context, couldn’t know what the depth and breadth of what might have been contained in that pocket full of wires once was.

And he didn’t doubt now that there’d been something there. He’d seen her kiss him, his synth self, and while he wanted to be happy in the knowledge that it might not have been one sided, that the longing and the ache had been echoed and returned, in that moment when her lips touched those of the Great Synth Detective, Nick felt his heart drop out of his chest to shatter somewhere on the floor.

She loved Nick, the Nick-that-Could-Remember.

Not Nick as he was now. Not the Nick that had sat with her on that set of church stairs dreaming of the woman at his side.

And while it was a small difference, it was a difference nonetheless. 

He could wait if he had to. Someday, the memories might come back and then it wouldn’t matter that he loved her _now_ , because he’d have loved her _then_ , would _be_ the man he’d been _then_ and could take up residence in that man’s shoes without feeling so much like a goddamned _impostor_.

But there was still so much he couldn’t remember. Too many holes and not enough answers and the one thought that plagued his every step since waking in this new world became a fully fledged out fear now: What if the memories never came back? 

He didn’t doubt she _could_ still love him, didn’t doubt that she might love him _still_ , but it wasn’t really _him_ she loved. Not Nick-Without-the-Memories. Her heart was attached to the mechanical man that had walked up and down the Commonwealth by her side and who knew her and what they’d done together and the full story of how they’d gotten there.

Nick had nothing but a couple weeks full of reading to her while she slept, three days since her waking, and a pair of feelings that matched, but only one that came with memories, to his name. 

Didn’t matter that he knew he was both people when he only felt like one. The wrong one.

He’d never wanted to live another man’s life as badly as he did now.

He wished he’d never known the other Nick, his _other_ self, had loved her.

It’d be a lie to say he hadn’t wanted it, though. Friends and partners were a fine thing, but from the moment he’d laid eyes on her, he’d known it would never be enough. Her every touch, her every breath; everything she said and did sent him over the moon. He couldn’t help it. Nora was some kind of angel pretending to be human, and his heart was already in her hands before she’d even said hello. At the time, he’d prayed there might have been something there once before, something that could be his again when he got his head back on straight.

But his head wasn’t on straight and when he stood there hat and heart in front of her door, he wouldn’t be the man she wanted. He couldn’t even remember the night in the rain she’d told him about, when she’d saved him from Skinny Malone the first time that they met.

At least he had a name to put to the ache in his chest and the longing in his gut that plagued him daily, but it was so much worse now than it’d been. The dull pain had been manageable, an old friend he’d met daily and greeted with resignation. The throbbing in his heart now was unbearable, a stranger so familiar it was a clear case of deja vu.

It was one thing to want her, to love her, to fantasize she loved him back. To dream that they’d once had a life together that would someday be his own again, when he’d know every word to her love songs because they’d already written them together. 

But this…

This left him in limbo.

He’d wanted a new life in Diamond City. Something small that he could call his own. But he’d always be walking in that other man’s shadow now, until Nick as he _was_ became just another memory and the Valentine that used to _be_ came back home.

“You’re thinking, again.” She murmured at his side, her eyes fixed ahead somewhere over Piper’s shoulder.

“Got a lot to think about,” he acknowledged just as quietly, his gaze trailing over their shoes.

“Well if that don’t beat all,” a voice in front of them shouted as they walked up to the old stadium entrance and stepped into it’s shadow. “Thought you guys might be dead! Ain’t nobody seen you in weeks!”

Nick did raise his head at that. A man stood before them in an old set of catcher’s leathers and a face masking helmet. He carried some kind of modified gun, one that looked more like it’d been cobbled together by a plumber than a machinist. Nick’s free hand twitched at his side, ready to grab his own pistol, before relaxing as he took in the man’s friendly posture. In context, he realized the man was some sort of gate guard, noticing another man with carrot-red hair standing behind the concessions counter behind him.

“Oh, you _know_ us!” Piper laughed and the sound in Nick’s ears hid nervousness. Odd. “Just stepped out for a walk! A reeeally long walk!”

“Huh huh,” the guard laughed along with her, his accent thick and more than a little familiar. Nick had heard a dozen like it back in his day at the bars and hanging around the clubs. “Yeah, youse guys never sit still for long do ya? Well, good to have you back.”

It was then that the man noticed Nick.

“Say…” he sounded surprised behind his mask. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear you look just like Nick Valentine!”

“Freaky coincidence, isn’t it?” Piper’s voice got a pitch higher as she continued to laugh, which made the guard continue to laugh, as Preston, Nora and Nick continued to walk by. “But you know what they say, you see one detective, you’ve seen em’ all, you know what I’m saying? Because that’s what I’m saying.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know whatcher sayin’!” The guard continued to chuckle. Nick had no idea what either of them were saying, but it didn’t matter much as they began to climb the stairs that led to the field.

“Ok! See you later, have fun guarding the gate!” Piper called back to the man with a wave, jogging to catch up to the rest of them.

Even in the shadows of the stairwell, Nick caught the look she exchanged with Nora. She was running some sort of defense right now for them. Wrong sort of sport stadium for that kind of play.

Nick swallowed hard as light suddenly flooded in from above and they took the last three stairs to the exit. He dipped his head when his foot landed on the top step. With sadness, he knew they’d finally reached the end of their journey.

He looked up, a sigh passing through his lips in resignation, and his breath caught.

Before him lie the whole of Diamond City and while it wasn’t the excitement he’d held for it at HQ, nor the melancholy gloom he’d known for it on the road, standing there, looking down at the mass of colorful buildings and meandering people; Nick suddenly had an overwhelming sensation of coming home.

“Welcome to the Great Green Jewel,” Piper swept her arm out as if she were a game show host revealing a set piece. “It’s big, loud and slowly changing from the days full of corrupt politicians and brown-nosing citizens. But it’s home.”

“Wait till you see it at night,” Nora gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “The lights are beautiful after sunset.”

Nick looked up towards the sky at that, taking in the pinks and oranges of the early sunset and trying to imagine what the streets below them would look like bathed under the stadium lights and food cart signs. For a moment, he forgot the despair and fell back into the dream.

“Oh yeah?” He glanced at her.

“I have a little rooftop space above Home Plate,” she was looking into the distance, eyes fixed ahead on something unknown, and sounding wistful. “It was the first thing I renovated for the old place when I bought it. It’s got a fence just high enough to see out without the whole world staring back at you...some plants...I like to spend my evenings up there just...looking out at it all.”

She smiled at him then and the longing he felt to stay lost in that moment with her nearly choked him.

“It’s a good place to sit and watch the world go by,” she said quietly.

Her words were too familiar and too honest to take in right now. Nick coughed and looked away.

“I’ll, ah, I’ll have to drop in sometime to see it,” he said lightly.

He was spared her response as Piper urged them down the stadium stairs and into the marketplace. It wasn’t Grand Central Station, but Nick thought there were must be more people here than in the entirety of the ruined Fens. Caravan traders, locals, shopkeepers and the occasional Minuteman sauntered through the dirt streets. The reporter pointed out all the landmarks of town as they went passed, taking pride when she motioned towards the Public Occurrences shack she called her own and noting the blue flags flying high over the city. She told him it was a sign of their allegiance with the Minutemen, who had ended the Great Green Jewel’s greatest nightmare when the Institute fell. The men and women of the citizen’s army were revered now in Diamond City and, according to Preston, both he and Nora enjoyed the perk of drinking for free at the Dugout Inn.

“More of a punishment than a reward, if you ask me,” Piper whispered to him. “Steer clear of Vadim’s moonshine if you can. He likes to joke that it’s strong enough to strip paint, but I’ve actually used it for that.”

“Yeesh,” Nick cringed. “Thanks for the head’s up.”

As they continued on their path in the direction of an oddly named storefront called “Swatters” where a man in an old baseball uniform was animated telling a couple of young Minutemen recruits about the horrors of the gladiatorial games once held on that sacred ground, they passed another guard who immediately turned towards them, arms open in greeting.

“Hey! heeey!” He laughed. “If it isn’t Mrs.—”

“Wright!” Piper exclaimed loud and sudden, throwing her arms open in a similar manner. She gave the guard a quick swat to his shoulder. “Piper Wright, your friendly City reporter, back in town! And you know it isn’t “Mrs.” yet, Harry...you...you old guard, you.”

As Piper continued to talk a mile a minute at the poor man, Preston directed them to keep walking.

“Piper has a lot of friends here,” he offered in explanation.

“Sure seems like it,” Nick wondered at their tactics. It’d come out sooner or later what had happened to him, though in all fairness, it did give him a reprieve from having to rehash a yarn every twenty feet or so.

Just ahead, a neon pink sign glared at them when they came to a fork in the road. “Detective” was glowing in block letters while the skewed metal frame surrounding it pointed down the shadowy alley to its right. The irony of the name not lost to him, they turned down Third St., and Nick nearly tripped over the edge of wood and cardboard someone had laid down to form a kind of pathway. He’d barely regained his footing in time to see another sign beckoning them from the other end of the alley.

There it was.

As they neared the flickering lights, Nick lost his breath to a chuckle. “Valentine Detective Agency”, it read, complete with a neon heart with cupid’s arrow pointing in towards a little alcove on the block. Nick stood in front of the sign a good long moment, the shadows from the alley deep enough that the letters cast his skin in soft pink light. Who in their right mind would ever call that sign an eyesore? Right now, to Nick, it was one of the most beautiful things he’d ever seen in all his life.

“Why don’t you do the honors?” Nora said softly. She had already moved ahead of him and into the alcove; waiting for him in front of a door.

“A-alright, then” he nodded and reached into his pocket to fish out the keychain Deacon had tossed him. Nick palmed the keys for a moment, memorizing the weight and feel of them in his hand, before stepping forward. What a silly thing to get so worked up about. They were just a pair of keys in his hand and this...this was just another door. He’d seen thousands of doors in his lifetime. Maybe millions. But...not this door.

This door was special somehow.

Nick took a deep breath and slid one of the keys into the lock. It wouldn’t turn.

“Oh...no, not..,” Nora flushed and gave that hinted smiled of hers. The one that was always just a little on the sad side. “...it’s the other key. The gold one.”

Nick took the key out of the lock and examined them in his hand. They rested atop the black leather heart holding the ring: One gold key, one silver.

He wondered for the briefest of moments what he’d needed two keys for. He only had one office. 

The thought was gone as quickly as it’d arrived, however, and shifting the keys with his fingers, Nick slid the gold key into the lock. It clicked. And then released. His other hand slid with ease over the rounded brass handle and with a turn, he opened the door.

It was dark inside; pitch black. His heart jumped as Nora’s arm slid by his own, the leather of her jacket scrapping his trench coat, and heard her flick a light switch.

An old metal ceiling lamp hummed as it sputtered to life, just above a stand up cigarette machine like they had outside the coffee shop on West Kendall and Aethenaeum St, back in the day. When the light finally held, Nick stared into the small room before him. Stacks of cardboard boxes from Cambridge Police Station sat on the edge of the nearest desk; the boxes a bit waterlogged and the desk edged with rust along the sides. One entire wall was nothing but filing cabinets, with more boxes stacked as high as the cracked wooden ceiling that hung above. An old painting of what looked to have once been a moose was staring at him from the far wall, hung on an angle that he wasn’t sure was entirely the fault of the painting.

There were three desks in the room counting the one just in front of him. The closest was littered with a variety of objects, though all looked neatly set as if the order was known only to the owner. A pair of fountain pens, a clipboard with notes, an old Boston Bugle, a desk fan that had seen better days, a pack of smokes next to an empty glass tumbler and one of those green shade desk lamps like he’d had back in his little apartment with the bay window. 

The desk in the back of the room was the most crowded. Reams of paper and yellow notepads covered it, a yellow coffee canister full of pens, pencils and a bright red hair brush fighting for space on the tabletop. Balanced precariously atop the notepads sat a flash camera that looked to be in pretty good shape, a black film canister open next to it. Piper and Nora had both told him about a girl named Ellie who’d been his secretary for years. By the ratty cardigan that hung off that desks chair and the pile of old women’s magazines sticking out of one drawer, Nick took the safe bet on it being hers.

Beside the cigarette machine was the final desk. This one was smaller than the other two and made entirely out of some kind of carved wood. The finish was scratched all to hell and the bottom drawer looked like it’d seen better days, but it kind of sweet paired with its matched rolling chair. The upholstery of the seat was a faded red, but otherwise in one piece. Like the other two, the owner was present in the details: a stack of notes written in neat script, several hardbacks braced against the wood paneled wall and a couple of potted plants, both on the desk and beside it. A blue carnival glass ashtray sat on the right hand side, a chewed pencil and a nearly empty whiskey glass nearby.

He didn’t need to ask to know it was Nora’s.

There on the wall above it, was a photograph; neatly pinned with rusted metal tacks. 

Nick stepped forward into the office; a slow, intent walk towards that photo.

“Oh my gosh, Nora!”

A woman with slickly styled hair and a faded pink skirt was standing in the doorway one moment and throwing her arms around Nora the next. She hugged her like a mother hugs a runaway; one part panic, one part love, and half a second away from scolding.

“They told me you were dead!” Her voice was shrill and distraught. “One of those railroad kids showed up after your party and told me you were dead!”

“I’m so sorry about that, Ellie,” Nora pulled back from the woman, hands still resting on her shoulders and fingers giving a reassuring squeeze. “But I’m fine. Really. We both are.”

“I swear to God,” Ellie huffed. “You two are going to be the death of me. What is it with Valentines and three week vacations under gunfire!”

“Sorry, Ellie,” Nora apologized again, thoroughly chastised.

If Nick had any doubts about who ruled the roost in this office, seeing a woman like Nora cower before Ellie wiped them clean. It would have been kind of comical to see the former General of the Minutemen standing so abashed before the woman had she not suddenly turned her attention on him.

“And you!” She rounded on him, a finger already pointing and ready to wag. “You! You…”

She paused mid rant and blinked.

Confusion crossed her face.

“Nick...is that _you_?” She took a full step back and away from him. She stared wide-eyed at him for a moment before glancing at Nora. Then back to Nick. She opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again.

Nora intercepted her.

“Why don’t you have a look around. Get reacquainted,” his partner smiled at him, ushering the still gaping woman towards the door. “I’ll take Ellie outside for a bit and then we can start the introductions over...a little more quietly.”

“Jesus, Nora..,” was the last thing he heard out of Ellie’s mouth before the door gently closed behind them.

If this is how the whole town was going to react to the him, Nick was glad Piper had run interference. He wasn’t sure if he could handle going through this routine more than once right now. He wondered for a moment where Preston had gone off to when they’d stepped into the office and if, perhaps, he was also out there in the City, keeping the locals and tourists at bay for the present.

Nick sighed and stood for a moment by himself in the silence of the office.

It smelled like a combination of tobacco, old newspapers and wood. It was comforting in an odd way and just a little bit familiar. The place felt like the kind of place where a guy could hang his hat and take up this sort of work. His imagination might have been a bit more polished with the finish, but overall, he decided he liked his office as it was.

Alone without distraction, Nick turned his attention back to the photo above Nora’s desk.

There they were. _Together._

The Great Synth Detective and his partner.

They stood side by side, his good arm thrown over her shoulders and her arm wrapped around the waist of his tattered trench coat. She wore the same leather jacket then as she wore now, the one emblazoned with the smiling black cat and atom bomb on the back. Atop her head was some kind of fedora, much lighter in color than his own, with a thick black band to it. It looked good on her.

On her face, she wore a smile; the kind of smile that was the beginning of a laugh. She looked happy. That unguarded and peaceful kind of happiness people wore when everything was right in their world. He thought she’d looked beautiful before, but seeing her like this? She was radiant. Happiness suited her.

His eyes followed the path of her left arm to where it met the hand slung over her shoulder. Her palm wrapped around the fingers of his good hand like she’d been pulling them closer together. A casual motion that had been repeated so many times, it looked natural even to a stranger. There was a gentleness in those two hands where hers met his; the knuckle of her little finger bent a fraction, caught before it could finish the caress it had started. On her third finger, sat the ring. 

Nick allowed himself to look at the man standing beside her. At first glance, it’d be easy to mistake it as a portrait of himself. In all truth, it was a sort of portrait of himself, standing there in that other body, without a real heart, but with a full head of memories to make up for it. It was surreal now to see him there, eyes open and glowing, even through the black and white film. The tattered skin at his neck and cheek had apparently been there longer than Nick had realized, as was the metal frame of the hand resting over Nora’s fingers at his waist. 

In the tattered coat and dusty hat, he made for a pretty sad picture. A rumpled and ripped open synthetic man, dressed in a post-apocalyptic take on the pre-war detective get ups. He didn’t photograph terribly well, that was for sure. Probably on account of all the rips and tears. The camera just didn’t love him.

But, God, that man looked happy. 

Nick felt the familiar ache rise up in his chest and he turned away before it could spill out of him. His hand reached up, giving the spot just below the loose knot of his tie a quick pat.

“Easy now, boy,” he murmured, eyes sharp and looking for something to distract himself with. “No use getting all worked up over things now.”

A coat rack by the back hall caught his attention and in two short strides he came to it. Perched on the top was the fedora from the photo. It was a smooth grey in color, darker now than it had looked against Nora’s near-black hair. The thick black band was some kind of satin, reflecting the light ever so slightly in the threading. Funny thing, seeing it now this close up. It was a fine hat, to be sure, just that there was something about it. Wasn’t the kind of hat you’d find in any shop. Looked like a custom job by the materials; like something you’d wear more for style than for warmth. Nick thought it reminded him of something. It was the kind of hat you’d expect one of those comic book heroes, like the Silver Shroud, to get around in. 

The hat was hardly for show, though. Upon closer inspection, the inside was lined with some sort of fine ballistic weave. Nick hadn’t seen anything quite like it before, not this thin and well made at least. It reminded him of the material his old stab vest had been made of, mixed with the heavier swat armor...if someone had managed to combine the two under a flat iron. Absently, Nick wondered if there was any more of that material lying around the place. Wouldn’t hurt to sew in a little extra protection to his layers in this new Commonwealth, bullet happy as the residents seemed to be.

Nick continued down the back hall coming to a bed resting under a stairway. It was a plain piece of furniture, with a cheap metal frame, two pillows and a shabby set of thick cotton blankets, both red in color; neither matching. It was made neatly enough, but by the stack of folders by the foot of the bed, it didn’t look like anyone had slept in it for quite some time. 

Huh.

Now that Nick thought about it, did robots even sleep? No, synths, not robots. Robots were different. The parts didn’t match.

Whether or not he’d ever used it before, it seemed maintained well enough he could take up residence there now and for that, Nick was grateful. He hoped the mattress was comfortable, old as it probably was. He’d take sleeping on a bed right now over that couch any day.

Attached to the bedroom, there was a small shower and loo. Not much, but big enough for a bachelor. The sink was small and the tile was chipped, but there was only one crack in the medicine cabinet mirror and surprisingly, clean towels on a shelf. He’d take the little victories for now. 

Venturing up the wooden stairs, Nick stepped out into what looked to be a kitchen of sorts. He recalled Nora telling him that Ellie had once lived up above the office, until she’d fallen in with that DJ and moved out. Now, there was a medium sized fridge, the lacquer yellow with age, and a deep basin sink beside a set of cabinets. A hot plate and an old coffee pot stood on one of the countertops beside a short line of mugs. Nosing through the cabinets and fridge, Nick found them more than well stocked with non-perishables, bottles of wine and whiskey that looked like they’d been expensive at one time and that were all marked with a strange crest in wax with a big gold “C” in the middle, and enough water he could start a small store.

At least he wouldn’t starve.

Turning to his right, Nick saw a stained glass lamp hanging from the ceiling over a round wooden table and chairs. A little further down the wall sat a beat up couch with a reading lamp at one side. Not too shabby a set up, all things considered. Enough to meet the basic needs. Anything more than that and...he could do without. He couldn’t help feeling a slight disappointment, though. He’d hoped the place might have a window, even if the glass wouldn’t be perfect. 

Nick sighed and berated himself. He could live without a window. He was lucky to have anything at all.

Intent on heading back down the stairs, Nick found himself standing in front of another door. A second floor balcony maybe? That seemed too much to hope for. Cracking it open, he felt the balmy evening breeze kiss his cheek and he stepped out into the early night air. It wasn’t a balcony, but a rooftop. A shared rooftop by the look of a couple of nearby doors up here, but a rooftop nonetheless. 

He thought back to what Nora had told him earlier and took a few steps forward to survey the space. It wasn’t much truth be told, and his view of the lights from here wasn’t what he’d call scenic, but it was his and for that he was appreciative. Like with everything else, he’d make do. He wouldn’t find everything he wanted here, but it was good enough to keep living for now.

As Nick walked along the rooftops, what he _did_ find were a few good places a guy could sit and think for a while if he didn’t want anyone to bother him. Knowing he could find a bit of privacy if he needed it was a comfort and as he walked back towards his office, he tipped his hat at a sleeping grey cat up near the shack he passed. It looked at him, yawned, and then turned onto its other side, unimpressed by his cordial attempts to be neighborly.

By the time Nick had returned inside and walked downstairs, Nora and Ellie were waiting for him.

“I’m...sorry for the way I acted earlier, Nick,” she cringed as she spoke, obviously embarrassed. “I didn’t know. Nora filled me in on everything and while I know you probably don’t remember me, I’m Ellie Perkins, your secretary.”

She held out her hand, and when Nick took it she gave his hand firm shake. Nick just stared at the pink and white striped cloth around her neck. Something clicked for him then, and he frowned.

“Uh...Nick?” Ellie tried again.

“I, ah, I’m sad to say I don’t quite remember you yet, Ellie,” he apologized and pulled out a little of the old Valentine charm he’d used back in the day. “But I do seem to remember that scarf.”

Ellie blanched.

“My...my scarf?” She swallowed hard, one hand lighting gently on the material. Nora gave her shoulder a reassuring rub.

“Just the color,” he said smoothly. “Imagine I must’ve seen you wear it sometime before.”

Ellie let out a breath followed by a quick laugh and the moment passed. 

“Oh. Oh! Yes, of course, I...I wear it all the time,” she said nervously. “That must be it.”

Things calmed down after that and the three of them sat down for a chat as Ellie reached into one of the filing cabinets and broke out a bottle of whiskey that had the same wax brand with the “C” as the ones upstairs. She poured them each a finger and they toasted to another case closed, though technically, even surviving the battle, Nick was still fighting a war. He wasn’t about to spoil Ellie’s good mood, however, and he accepted the cheer and listened to her fill Nora and him in on all the goings on around town they’d missed in their absence.

Nick half-listened to the gossip she was rolling through, his eyes still fixed on her scarf. He hadn’t really lied when she’d introduced herself that second time. He had recognized her scarf. 

It belonged to her older sister, Elizabeth, a sweet girl with a good mind for numbers, who made her caps tracking the finances for the Upper Stands bigots with more money than math in their minds. That career had been what killed her. That and the bullet from a triggerman’s gun. One of the rich bastards living above had been skimming off some of the profit he owed a drug boss named Markowsi. Nick couldn’t remember more of the man besides his name, but he knew that man been dangerous enough he’d sent one of his boys to take care of the payment still due. Elizabeth had just been collateral damage when the guy’d burst into her small office on the second level, looking for a rich man’s books.

Gun shots weren’t as common in Diamond City as they were outside the gates, however, and with the guards on his heels and the exit far from his feet, the triggerman had taken the first hostage he could grab. Ellie had been just shy of 17 then and still shaken from fear and grief when the man had been dragging her at gunpoint towards the gates. It’d been nothing more than providence and good timing when Nick had stumbled upon them, returning home from another job. He’d made quick work of the thug and despite aiming for justice, he’d put a slug through the man’s brain rather than risk the girl. 

He’d gained a little more respect in the City after that incident. His detective office wasn’t new at the time, but he charged little for his services and had been just scraping by with whatever was offered. A sudden boom in business came after people heard the synth had put down a slug man and saved another girl. And with it, came higher offers of caps and an insistence he charge them more. It helped him keep the lights on for a change and even earned him enough to buy a new sign for out front.

Couldn’t do a damned thing for Elizabeth, however, and it burned him that the guards had let so obvious a criminal give them the slip at the cost of an innocent woman’s blood. He’d sent the entirety of the caps he’d earned from that job he’d been returning to the city on to her younger sister, in hopes even 100 caps might help give her a new start.

Two days after he’d delivered the stash, Ellie had come knocking at his doorstep. She wore her sister’s favorite pink and white scarf and introduced herself as Nick’s new secretary. He hired her on the spot.

And after that, he supposed she’d stayed on with him, because after that...there was nothing more he could remember about Ellie Perkins. Just the scarf and the first time he’d seen her wearing it.

He was glad the incident hadn’t seemed to break her. That tough exterior she’d shown in his memories seemed to have carried through the years with her. She was a bit on the mothering side with her detectives, but he couldn’t blame her for all the stories she told of the trouble they got into when they were out on a case. 

She clarified that this wasn’t the first time she’d spent three weeks waiting to hear from him. Ellie had nearly torn her hair out when Nick had disappeared looking for some missing girl, only to turn up with Nora just after midnight one rainy evening. She’d continued the story with enthusiasm, while Nick lost his own for hearing it. He knew about the night she was referring to. Was desperate not to think about it.

Nora had explained it to him in detail that afternoon they’d spent pressed together on the steps of the Old North Church. Try as he might, and God, he tried; Nick couldn’t remember anything about that rainy evening they all seemed to hold so dear. That rainy evening he should remember. The evening that started it all.

It was the first time he’d ever met Nora, when he was in that other body, and they’d stood together under the moon, as the sky poured down around them. He was certain it’d been a beautiful thing, even if he hadn’t thought so at the time. Not that he’d know now though. He could only imagine it and wish for more.

Nick thought he might spend his whole life dreaming of that night he couldn’t remember. It was a painful thought.

The hour grew late and the conversation began to dwindle. Ellie hugged them both one last time, shaking her head again as she pulled away from Nick in disbelief, before excusing herself for the evening. She hadn’t been expecting them back and she and Travis had plans. They reassured her as old friends do, that it was fine and she should go and they would see her some time the next morning. She waved goodbye, welcomed them back one more time before she left and then slipped out of the office and into the night.

Though the hinges had been greased and the door shut quite smoothly, Nick startled when the latch clicked as if it’d been slammed.

The silence after was deafening. 

It was the first time he’d been alone with Nora since leaving the Railroad’s HQ. The first time since he’d turned in P.A.M’s doorway and watched his partner lean over the empty shell on that table that his mind had once been housed in. The first time since she’d kissed the Great Synth Detective and he’d fled from that door.

He’d been dreading this moment all afternoon.

“Nick.”

His heart was racing again now and his fingers fidgeted around the glass tumbler they held, wishing for all the world it wasn’t so empty.

“Just tell me about it,” she said softly. “What are you thinking?”

“Been a hell of a day, hasn’t it,” he said, though to her or to himself; it could have been either.

“The market’s probably cleared out by now,” she started, careful to keep her tone bright. “We could take a walk around town...get some air, see the lights?”

Nick’s eyes closed. He took a shallow breath. 

He couldn’t keep living in this fantasy, where she was his and his alone. Much as he wanted to say yes...he had to let her go.

“I’m a bit tired, actually,” he sighed. “Think I might turn in. Dunno how much use I got outta that bed back there before, but I could sure use some time in it now.”

He watched her watching him, concern written in her eyes. She nodded slowly after their pause and set her glass on the edge of his desk. 

“Guess it has been a long day,” she acknowledged, forcing a smile to her lips. 

“Can I...walk you to the door?” He offered, hoping he could mend some of the wounds he’d just caused.

“I think I’d like that,” she gave a soft laugh. A small step, but at least, a start.

They rose in unison and Nora slid back into her black leather jacket. Nick watched her motions in fascination. One arm gracefully following the other through her sleeves, the jacket embracing her like an old lover who’d been lucky enough to hold her close through the years. It settled on her small frame and he followed her to his door, reaching around her hip and feeling the sparks run up his wrist as her hand came upon the knob in time with his. 

They both pulled back slowly, carefully, before Nick bravely tried again, turning the brass handle and letting in the cool night air. 

She looked at the outside as if it might be the end of her, before her expression fell back into that endless calm she wore like armor. He heard the breath in her lungs, before her foot took her forward and she stepped into the alcove. She turned back once both feet were firmly planted just outside his door and the longing that washed over Nick in that moment when the blue of her eyes met his grey, nearly undid him.

“Hey Valentine,” there was melancholy in her love song tonight and sorrow in each verse. It sounded bittersweet and he longed to change the tune.

“Can I do something for ya?” he said quietly, his knuckles white on the door handle for want of reaching out to her.

“We need to talk,” she murmured. “You and me.”

“Thought that’s what we were doin’,” his chuckle came out as a breath. He swallowed to clear the lump from his throat, but the damn thing was stuck tight.

She shook her head.

“Not like this. There’s a lot of things that haven’t been said yet,” she was looking at his tie through a half-lidded stare now. “Things that you don’t know yet about yourself...and about me.” 

His tongue felt thick in his throat and when the wind from outside curled into the alcove, brushing strands of dark hair out of place against her cheek, he was choking on the urge to touch her.

“D-don’t think I’d be very good company tonight,” his voice ran low and rasping. “Another time?”

She was watching him again and he was drowning in that blue sky of hers. 

“Of course,” her lips twitched, the ends turning up ever so slightly. “After you’ve slept. We can try again tomorrow.”

Neither of them moved.

“You...gonna be okay out there on your own?” Nick asked, voice soft.

It was a leading question. And both of them knew it.

“I’ll survive,” she shook her head. 

“Heard somewhere you’re good at that,” he murmured.

She gave a shrug and another little laugh.

“I guess I used to be.”

“And now?” He swallowed.

“Down a couple of lives these days,” she smiled up at him and Nick’s control began to shatter. “Remember?”

“How could I forget?” His voice was barely above a rumble now. 

It was then that his left hand betrayed him, sliding from its grip on the doorframe and hitching up slowly to slide against her cheek. It brushed the playful strands the wind had taken, back and behind her ear; thumb and forefinger trailing down one ebony length, until his knuckles ghosted over her collarbone.

His hand slid from her hair to gently cup the column of her neck. The silk-soft skin of her throat made him shiver. He could feel her pulse beating slow and steady against his palm.

“You...,” he whispered. “You take care of yourself out there. Think I’d be pretty lost if anything happened to you.”

“I’m not worried,” she leaned closer. “Not when I know the greatest detective in the Commonwealth could still find me.”

“You give him too much credit,” his breath came in rapid, silent puffs.

“You don’t give him enough,” her left hand came up to cup his cheek.

Nick tensed. 

Nora leaned up.

He closed his eyes and felt the brand of her lips against his cheek as they held there for a long moment. The air left him in one sharp, ragged huff and Nick was certain his heart had stopped pumping. He felt the soft pull of her lips as they finally slid away, her fingers trailing back down his jaw, until they fell back into the air. His eyes struggled to stay open as he looked at her now, his world gone hazy and blurred.

God, what had she done to him.

She reached up, taking his hand at her neck into her own and with a quick kiss to his knuckle, she slid it down and away. She held it between them a moment more, her fingers against his, the most gentle he’d ever known.

“Goodnight...Mister Valentine,” she smiled that small smile of hers. The one that always broke his heart.

She stepped back once.

Then once again. 

Her fingers released her grip on his. 

“Goodnight, Nora,” he whispered after her. 

But she already was gone.

Nick stood in the loneliness of his doorway, listening to the wind’s teasing whistles as it danced past his alcove, singing love songs playing on Diamond City Radio as it went by. He tucked himself back into the office and closed the door, feeling the lock catch with finality. 

With a sigh, he shut off the lights and made his way to the back hallway of the room.

He closed his eyes the moment his back hit the mattress, but knew he’d still be awake for several hours now. He tried to pretend he was back in his little apartment near the waterfront, the one with the big bay window. The one space in the world that had always been his. A small place, with small comforts that he could call his own. He _needed_ to be there right now, imagined he was there right now; because facing the truth was so much worse.

Tonight...tonight, nothing was his and when his mind finally quieted and his body started to drift, Nick knew without a doubt he’d be sleeping in another man’s house, in another man’s bed; dreaming of another man’s girl.


	15. Living on Coffee and Smokes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good Morning! Had to re-upload this chapter. Something went screwy with italics.
> 
> As always, comments are most welcome! I've been reading them on my coffee breaks and they get me excited to write when I get home, rather than nap. xD 
> 
> You guys are the best. <3

Nora woke late the next morning, burrowed under the warmth of her Silver Shroud bedspread at Home Plate. Alone.

Her pip boy glared at her from its place on the nightstand, the blue light in the darkness a harsh reminder it was time to start another day. She glared right back at it for a moment before turning over again. Sleep sounded like a better solution, even if the mattress now felt miles wide. 

She wasn’t used to sleeping solo anymore.

The Commonwealth made for strange bedfellows even among strangers, where warmth was a commodity and propriety was an outdated concept. She’d grown accustomed to having another warm body at her back over the years and even before they’d married, she’d spent a lifetime full of nights drifting off to the soothing sound of coolant pumping through Nick’s chest as she curled against his leg. Nick didn’t sleep back when they’d been on the road together, but come nightfall he’d prop himself up against the nearest wall or tree and wait for her to come lie next to him. 

She could still remember the soft feeling of his trench coat against her cheek; the material old and worn until the fibers were brushed smooth. He used to run his fingers through her hair when he thought she’d been sleeping, but she’d lie awake against him in anticipation of that soothing comfort as it swept tentatively over her skin. If he ever noticed, he’d never said anything, and the two passed away endless nights in the safety of their mutual deception.

She’d hated her first few nights living in Home Plate when she’d first moved to Diamond City. There had been no need for a bed mate when you had a strong roof over your head. Every noise made her jump and not even an attempt to leave the lights on had helped. Some nights were so bad in the beginning, she’d stayed at the office until she fell asleep at her desk, just to have him nearby when she woke. It was a rough adjustment period to say the least, but eventually, she’d been able to survive the nights alone, no longer waking in a panic when the press of another body against hers had been absent.

That was before they’d married, though. It was one thing to sleep back to back with a friend, it was entirely another to lay next to her husband, safe in knowledge that the one you longed for was right next to you. Nick didn’t need to use his sleep protocols at the time, but he used them anyway. He’d wanted to lie next to her and know that kind of comfort for himself. 

Nora couldn’t imagine getting used to being alone again. Once had been enough, when she’d been tossed out of that cryo-pod unceremoniously at the feet of the corpse of her first husband, Nate. That had remained a waking nightmare for so long, at the time, she’d avoided sleep until she literally dropped from exhaustion.

Nick had stopped that habit quickly. Being a synth and not needing to rest, it’d taken him nearly three days after they’d first met to notice she’d been keeping pace with him. Under the excuse of needing to run some diagnostics, he’d led her back to a small office in the building they’d been cutting through, shoved a desk against the door and had sat down on the beat up couch therein. He’d coaxed Nora to sit down with an offered can of water and she woke sometime the next day with her head in his lap and his trench coat laid over her.

They never spoke of it, but every night after, as if he were counting the hours between her last rest, he’d sit and she’d sleep and they’d continue on their way the next morning.

For as much time as he spent admiring all the things she did for him, Nick never acknowledged that street ran both ways. But Nora knew. She remembered them all; big things, and small. From the offer of a cigarette before taking his own, to holding her for hours when she’d first returned from the Institute, unable to cry, but still a shaking mess. 

She’d been trapped down there for two weeks with those monsters; playing along after that first horrible moment when she’d learned the truth about Father’s identity in the same breath that he revealed his twisted views of the world in. As much as she’d wanted to walk away, she felt a terrible sense of responsibility come over her, both as a mother and as the only person in the Commonwealth that had made it into the Institute on their own two feet rather than under a courser’s strong arm. 

She’d lay in that sterile room they’d given her, staring up at the white ceiling tiles, silently mourning with finality, the death of her son. Father might have been who Shaun had grown into, but he wasn’t her child anymore. She was nothing more than an experiment to him, one that he eyed with distant interest. She was just another rat in his maze with a promise of reward if she performed the course he’d set before her. Perhaps it was because she’d only just become a parent before he’d been taken or perhaps it was just part of her nature, but a mother’s love only went so far and hers ended far before the mass genocide Father wanted to see happen. It’d been a cold and rational thought that had crossed her mind that first night, just a fact, no emotion; she couldn’t let the man live.

She’d made her way back to the Railroad when Father finally trusted her enough to release her back into the wild and, with Nick at her side, she formed her first allegiance with another faction as General of the Minutemen. Desdemona went from dangerous stranger to trusted friend and while she asked much of Nora as a double agent, Nora was determined to carry the weight of the burdens ahead. By the end of it, she had a second partner in Deacon; a man so much like her brother, it hurt sometimes to listen to him, and a new name, which Nick had suggested before she could think to pick one.

_Charmer._

She’d thought it an odd choice, but when questioned, Nick insisted it was because she could charm any machine in the Commonwealth. He’d always been a flirt, but for some reason, that time had sent her heart to flutter. She thought on that moment often after that, replaying the words over and over again in her mind. It helped her get through her days beneath the University. It helped her not to break.

She’d spent a year in that fragile state after. Somewhere between the earth and sky. With every mission she “failed” for Father, ten more succeeded for the Railroad. It was a delicate balance; giving the Institute small wins when it might benefit the Commonwealth in the long run and mucking up the big ones by “accident” like their attack on Bunker Hill. Nora had argued with Desdemona about letting the Institute have the plants out at Warwick Homestead, but now, she understood the long game Dez had been playing. It’d given her an in with the biology scientists and without their scrutiny upon her, Nora had been able to sneak out multiple samples and holotapes of their research. When the Institute fell, it would fall without the knowledge that they’d helped the Commonwealth with their experiments after all. 

Curie had started working with Doc Carrington then and once Nora had convinced Doctor Li to defect and had saved T.S Eliot from being taken, the Railroad Science Team began to use the research she stole for better purposes. It was a small comfort in the scheme of things, but still a comfort, nonetheless.

And, much as it irritated her, they could do nothing for the real Roger Warwick. She’d seen what was left of his poor body first hand, when Justin Ayo had taken her for a tour of his chamber of horrors and she’d spent the evening in her room vomiting until the bile turned up red. Father hadn’t been the only monster in that den and Ayo was the worst of them all. 

She’d made the mistake of telling him ghouls were still people once. He’d had X6 bring him one of the men from The Slag to prove her wrong. He’d called her to his office to show her what a ghoul really was, underneath it all, and as she stared at the opened up corpse on the table, the sheets lying under him dyed red from all the blood; for one horrible moment, she’d thought it was _John_.

Nora had cried after that. She’d cried long after she’d teleported back to the surface, still pale and shaking when she showed up to Nick’s office, knocking at his door as the sun fell.

Nick had truly been an angel back then.

He had walked her every step of the way through that hell and though Nora had always been stoic about her experiences therein, they’d had long conversations late into the night each time she returned to Diamond City from that underground lair. It was the first time she could remember him holding her hand; his synthetic fingers rubbing soothing circles against her skin as she recounted what she’d heard and seen in soft, even tones to keep from screaming. She kept the same placid look on her face each time the scientists below showed her another torture victim, another plan of attack on the Railroad, another request sent down by Father for her to kill someone. 

The decision was made to finally put down the Institute once and for all, when Father assigned Nora the task of destroying the Railroad. That was the official reason, at least. In truth, it was because Justin Ayo had cornered Nora about a piece of Institute property up on the surface that he was concerned about. Not a Gen 3 model, but an older one. One that seemed to think he was human.

Nora wasn’t sure how he’d found out, but Ayo knew about Nick. More specifically, he knew about her friendship with Nick and the more he talked, the more she read between the lines to the twisted heart of what he was actually saying. She’d seen the same tactics used by the District Attorney back in the day when he’d insinuated she should drop her case and let an innocent man hang, because otherwise he’d cause problems for her. Justin Ayo was just another asshole who thought himself above everyone else. But he was a dangerous asshole and one, who in no uncertain terms, was threatening to terminate Nick. 

Ayo wanted to lead the Institute and if Nora wanted her detective to stay alive, she’d abdicate her inherited throne to him once Father was dead. Nora had balled up her fist and socked him hard in the temple as a response. He went down like a sack of tatos and she locked him in a supply closet, before teleporting straight to the Old North Church and begging Desdemona to help her end the mission.

The Institute was gone from the face of the Earth by the following morning and no one was the wiser as to what had really set the final battle off, save for a handful of integral people and Ellie.

That bastard Ayo just wouldn’t stay dead, however. He’d made it out of the Institute before the end and had spent his time over the last few years poking at the Minutemen’s defenses with the remainder of his synth troops. She didn’t doubt he was behind X6-88’s attack on her and Nick. He’d meant to kill them both, she knew, but if X6 had managed to send him any visuals from that day, she was sure he’d be pleased at the thought of her living while Nick had been at death’s door.

God, how she wished things had gone differently. After all they’d survived together, seeing him like that, gut shredded and coolant painting the world black, had been a nightmare made true. She almost wished Ayo _had_ managed to kill her. And Nick...god, Nick...

Nora slid deeper under the covers, trying to stop her mind from thinking about it. About him sitting there by the Corvega, his eyes flickering and breath ragged. She clutched the only other pillow of the large bed, inhaling the scent of tobacco and gun oil the cotton of its cover still held. She hated that the bed felt so empty now. She hated that she hadn’t been able to stop X6 in time. She hated that, for all she’d managed to do over her years in the Commonwealth, the one thing she couldn’t do, was to save Nick.

“You can’t live like this,” she whispered against it. “You can’t live like this anymore. He’s right _there_ , dammit. You just have to try. Goddamnit, just _try_.”

And then, as if she were back on that street again staring down that Courser’s corpse, Nora clenched her teeth and begged her muscles to move.

Get up.

_Get up._

She had to get up.

Willing her arms to release, she took a deep breath and pushed herself upright. It took a monumental effort to get that far and so she rested there for a moment, waiting for her pulse to even out. Her head ached with the phantom pain of her scarred-over wounds, but the more she breathed in and back out again, the less she felt their sting. The faerie lights strung above their bed cast multicolor splotches across her skin in the shadows and, entranced, she traced the distance between one blurry yellow patch to a nearby blue.

It was going to be one of those days, she just knew it. She’d lived through enough of them. She wasn’t about to give in now.

The heart she carried began aching in her chest, gnawing at the ribs that caged it, and rather than let it eat away at her, she turned in defiance and reached for the light switch. A generator hummed as the house lights kicked on and one by one, the colors were drowned out with the stronger white lights throughout her rooms.

“Just get your feet on the ground,” she murmured, forcing her limbs to obey. It took two tries to free herself from the sheets, but when the cotton had fallen away, and her skin was left bare, she slid forward until the nubs of the small flower shaped rug kissed her soles and she sighed in immediate relief.

Standing was an easier task, the first step always being the hardest, and once she was up on her feet again, Nora found it easier to move. She shucked out of her t-shirt and tossed it against the wall, standing bare from the waist up and letting the air cool her skin, before storming to her drawers for more clothing. 

She’d be lying if she said it didn’t still hurt.

It was no different than being shot, really. The bullet sharp and quick and painless unless you stopped moving and let the wound sink in. It still hurt like a bitch on the first step forward, but if you gritted your teeth and kept your eyes on the horizon, you might just make it to the next town. She’d lived through worse wounds than this, had built settlements and killed deathclaws while bleeding. She could take another hit if she had to, still had the strength to go back to war. Bullet holes couldn’t bind her legs if she refused to let them. She remembered the pain of being shot, remembered the tears and the fear. And all the while your body aches and your muscles cry and your brain begs you to just stand still for a moment; but standing still meant dying, and Nora refused to give in.

She piled the clothes on the end of the bed as she dug them out of the dresser drawers, before scooping them up and tromping downstairs and throwing herself into her shower. The water shocked her with it’s sharp chill, and for a moment she was back in that tube, underground, when she’d been weak and scared and starting. But as the hot water finally kicked in and she cursed herself for not letting it run, the tension eased and the panic subsided and she was once again back to her calm.

She scrubbed herself clean in that heat, always preferring the warmth to the cold. She’d tried to live her life by that, both before and after the bombs. Despite her bravado, she’d never been cutout for the cut throat’s life and though she hadn’t hesitated to put her bullets where they needed to go, she’d tempered her judgments with mercy when she could. It would have been an easy thing to become cold and hard and unfeeling; the Commonwealth bred that kind of thinking, but Nora retained her courage and never lost her softness to a sharp edge. 

Nick had played a large part in that, she knew. He kept her grounded with his wry sense of humor, kept her human with his caring nature, kept her safe and looking forward as the extra gun at her back. There’d been a time when she’d been prepared to kill off every last bit of herself to keep from falling in this new world, and instead, he’d offered her an arm so that she could find her legs again. No one knew better than Nora that Nick’s sense of self was tentative at the best of times, but synth, ghoul, or human; she’d never known a better man.

He’d let her drag him halfway around the Commonwealth, had stood with her while she’d rebuilt the Minutemen and allied with the Railroad; he’d held her hand as she’d watched the last of her old life burn with the Institute.

He’d been her partner in every sense of the word.

When he’d finally asked for something in return, Nora had jumped at the chance to do just that. To show him that their friendship wasn’t a one way street. Taking out Eddie Winter seemed like a small thing to ask after the mountains he’d walked with her across, but the peace of mind it seemed to bring Nick had stopped any smart remark she could make of it. Instead, as they stood there at the riverside afterwards, at the place where the woman he’d once remembered loving had been killed. She’d held him for a long time and reassured him she wasn’t going anywhere without him.

She’d kept that promise, even as the winds of change dragged them apart at times. She made it a point to visit Diamond City as often as she could and they were never apart for more than a week or two at a time on the occasion she ventured out with someone else and he stayed behind. Back then, it was friendship that tied them together and a sense of comradely she’d not experienced in well over 200 years.

But then she’d brought him back an old typewriter she’d found in the ruins on one of her trips and he’d teased her about having a thing for antiques. It was harmless in the scheme of things, despite the wink he’d thrown her over a mouthful of innuendo; another par for their course, friendly flirting that was just part of their parcel.

Except when he looked at her now, her chest held butterflies and when he’d stood beside her, Nora felt her cheeks glow red. It was just like that time at HQ, when he’d named her Charmer and she’d lived on his words for weeks after.

It wasn’t just friendship between them. It was love. And not a new love. One she’d been drowning in for so long, she hadn’t seen it for what it was until then.

She wasn’t ready to spook him though. Nick was a right mess when it came down to his own feelings and she’d played the long hand waiting him out. If she advanced, he withdrew and each step right, took him further on her left. After a while, Nora wondered if they’d ever get through the moves.

But he’d advanced on her unexpectedly one night when she’d stopped into town, and over drinks at Vadim’s, as they discussed life and what the future held now that the war was over, he’d taken a sip full of the whiskey he’d said tasted of battery acid, and asked her to be his partner.

The partnership brought them closer still, and while friends and partners were great, both of them spent their days pining until the day their dance finally ended, somewhere with her dress on the floor. That distinction changed his confidence and with a candy-heart quick “Be Mine” from Nick, she’d become his permanent Valentine before Father Clements could say “kiss the bride”.

Nick liked to think that Nora had been the one to take that first step for the pair; that’d she’d been the one who’d been brave, but Nora knew it’d all started that night he’d downed the whiskey. He’d gambled with his heart on the table, sitting before a General and asking her to take an office job.

He never gave himself enough credit for anything. Ridiculous man.

Looking back, Nora didn’t believe for a moment that Nick actually thought she’d take him up on his shy offer to join the agency, but she’d jumped at the chance, laying down a small fortune in caps to buy Home Plate, so he couldn’t doubt her sincerity. She’d left the Minutemen and the Railroad behind, knowing she’d helped them secure the beginnings of a better Commonwealth and stepped outside the safety of the City walls whenever they called upon her, because retirement or not, she couldn’t help but care.

MacCready had called it her weakness at first; Deacon had laughed about it being one hell of a character flaw, but if caring was to be her downfall, she’d die gladly for it. It was why she’d taken up law in a crime ridden city ruled by mob kings and cold killers. It was why she’d joined the Minutemen long before she’d found the Institute. It was why she’d chased down a detective she’d never met and rescued him from a handful of thugs, just to stand beside him in the night rain to say “hello”.

Nora knew she would always come running when someone needed her help. Nick had been the same way.

Two hearts in a pair, they were.

Right now though, no matter how much she was hurting, how much she was _aching_ , Nora knew Nick had it so much worse. She wasn’t entirely sure what had changed since they’d departed from HQ, but she was certain _something_ had happened. Something that’d scared him. 

The look in his eyes last night as they’d stood together in the office doorway had said it all. He’d wanted to kiss her, but he’d been _afraid_ to. It wasn’t the first time they’d gone round the floor in this dance, but she was determined to pick up the steps, even if the rhythm had changed on her.

So what was he afraid of? She was a detective now, not a General; figure it out. 

Was it her? Or was it love in general? Or was it something more unique?

One thing was for certain, Amari be damned, Nora was going to tell him everything today. He deserved to know the truth: About him, about her, about not needing to change that old office sign, because they shared the same name in the end.

After that...after that, she’d let him decide what he wanted. She was still his to have, if he’d have her.

And if not?

If not...

She’d take whatever he could give and learn to sleep alone.

Finishing her shower, Nora dressed quickly. She grabbed a cigarette in place of breakfast and slid into her old leather jacket, the weather-soft feel of it a familiar armor she needed for today’s battle. Before she left, Nora stopped by the bathroom mirror twice more and checked on the plants again, always grateful Ellie remembered to water them when she was away. A moment before she opened her door, she pulled on the thin leather strap around her neck and kissed the heavy silver band that hung from it.

Nora was always willing to play the numbers, but a little more luck on her side couldn’t hurt.

She squared her shoulders and stepped out of Home Plate, before locking the door behind her and tucking the white leather heart key-chain into a pocket.

The walk to the office took longer than she’d expected. Even as she’d kept her head down and tried to take the back alleys, between the guards and the few Minutemen currently in town, she’d found herself delayed. She’d greeted them all as old friends, even among the new faces, and begged her leave due to an unspecified lateness. Nora laughed despite it all. At least Harry was now on night shifts, if Ellie’s gossip from the last three weeks had been true. They guy was sweet, to be sure, but man, could he talk her ear off.

Finally, she slipped onto Third Street from the back side, the dull glow of pink sign still bright in the shadows of the midday sun. Her hand brushed against it fondly before she stepped passed and into the alcove entry. 

“In for a cap,” she sighed and slid her key into the lock, hoping the morning had brought new resolve to everyone involved.

Pushing her weight to the door, Nora walked into the office, finding Ellie seated at her desk. Her query was nowhere in sight.

“Morning, Nora,” Ellie called. “Coffee’s already brewing upstairs for ya.”

“Hey, El,” Nora glanced around. “Have you seen Nick this morning?”

Ellie blanched.

“I, uh...no,” she admitted, already looking ready to panic. “He’s not with you?”

“No, I haven’t seen him yet, but we had plans to meet today,” Nora kept her voice light, determined not to scare her.

Ellie got up from her desk then and walked straight to Nick’s. Drawing a scrap of paper off the tabletop she held it out to Nora.

“Sorry, I just assumed he meant the both of you,” she sighed.

Nora looked at the note. As brushoffs went, it was short and sweet.

_Taking in the sights._  
_-NV_

“Do you...do you think we should go look for him?” Ellie fidgeted, looking at the door.

Nora seriously considered it. He’d certainly chased her all over the world once, she could at least return the favor. But much as she found the humor in that thought, she immediately thought better of it.

“Let’s...let’s give him some time,” she finally said. “I’ll have that cup of coffee and if he’s not back in a few hours, I’ll go find him.”

“A-alright,” Ellie agreed, before rushing passed Nora and up the stairs with a laugh. “No, no, you sit. I’ll grab the coffee. It’ll give me something to do, other than worry.”

Nora admired Ellie for that. She’d kill for something to keep her from worrying right now.

Not that Nick could get into too much trouble in Diamond City on his own right now. The Great Green Jewel was currently safer than it’d ever been, save for the gamblers and racketeers still living in the upper stands. No, she wasn’t worried about his safety.

There was the issue of the people, however. Secrets were hard to keep in the city and if he’d been out in the streets for any length of time now, chances were he already knew half of what she’d come here to talk about. 

It wasn’t the way she’d wanted to tell him her last name. Not the way she’d wanted him to find out he’d come out of cold storage 200 years late to find himself hitched to a woman he’d just met. Not that love needed high numbers attached to it, but he’d probably take the news better if it came from her rather than some stranger on an unfamiliar street. 

Ugh. Definitely was going to be one of those days.

“Here,” Ellie returned with a steaming cup of coffee and a plateful of snack cakes. “Cigarettes don’t count as food, even in the Commonwealth.”

“I might have eaten something,” Nora protested, taking the coffee gratefully.

“And I might’ve sprouted wings last night,” Ellie shook her head.

“My goodness, Ellie,” Nora gave her a wicked smile. “What _do_ you and Travis get up to?”

Ellie turned as red as the cushion on Nora’s chair. The embarrassment didn’t last long though before the scolding began.

“I’m wise to your tricks Miss Nora Valentine,” she glared and shoved the plate closer. “And until your husband regains his senses, I’ll be dogging you everyday about this! I swear, one of these days you’re going to slip right down the drain.”

Nora smiled and ate a cake.

“I’m just not a big girl, Ellie,” she said halfway through another cake. “I don’t know where it all goes.”

“Probably right to your fat head,” she tried to huff, but her laugh ruined it. “Honestly, Nora, for a girl who’s out saving the world all the time, you’ve gotta start taking better care of yourself. Coffee and smokes are not enough to live on, not even for you.”

“You and I both know I’m a terrible cook,” Nora tossed her a cake before polishing off the last one. 

“Lucky for you, I’m not,” Ellie headed back up the stairs again. “I’m making you a proper breakfast and then I’m gonna sit and watch you eat it.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Nora replied in a sing-song tone. 

Ellie wasn’t wrong though. Nora had a bad tendency to skip meals. Not for lack of a love of food, mind you. Food was both delicious and a precious commodity in the ‘Wealth, she just tended not to eat when she was nervous or on the move...both of which were a common theme of her life in this new world after the bombs.

Thankfully, Ellie had taken to feeding Nora like a kid to a new puppy. From the moment she’d first stepped into the Valentine Detective Agency all those years ago, Ellie had been cooking for her. It started with snack cakes and water tucked into her pockets and, these days, continued with homemade meals. 

Travis didn’t know what a lucky man he was.

Ellie had been raised by her older sister, in a similar manner as Piper with Nat. Her sister had been the breadwinner for them both and Ellie handled the household. Nora liked to imagine Ellie scolding her older sister in much the same way she scolded Nora nowadays. It was a much happier thought than the truth she’d told Nora once about how she’d come to stay with Nick.

Nora liked Ellie immensely. She was mother and sister and best friend all rolled into one tough secretary who kept the books with ridiculous accuracy. Sometimes, Nora felt like the agency only kept running on account of Ellie. Neither she nor Nick handled the paperwork as well as they ought to, especially considering they’d both once been buried under it for their jobs before the bombs. As much as Ellie gave them hell for it, she always seemed happiest when she was running their numbers; another thing she’d learned from the sister that she’d lost. 

They made a strange little family, Nick, Nora and Ellie, but it was a good one. One that Nora wouldn’t trade for all the world. She hoped now that this incident with X6 and all that was yet to come wouldn’t break them.

It made her chest ache to think about losing another family. Much as it had hurt to lose Nate and Shaun--and God, but that had _hurt_ \--she’d spent years more time now and been through literal hell with this one. The Wonderglue that held them all together was stuck tight, but for how much longer, she couldn’t say. She felt like one wrong word right now could break them. She suddenly wasn’t sure she’d survive if it did. 

True to her word, Ellie brought her the biggest plate of Brahmin steak and Mirkeggs Nora had ever seen and while she ate, they drank coffee and talked, both glancing now and then at the empty desk beside them. Halfway through their second cup of coffee, Ellie’s fingers slid around Nora’s, giving them a reassuring squeeze and Nora nodded in acknowledgement, forcing another swallow of coffee down against the growing irritation in her throat.

“It’ll be alright, Nora,” Ellie murmured. “We’ve come this far, the three of us, haven’t we?”

“And fought raiders and rescued detectives and brought home runaway girls,” Nora laughed, though the smile was far from her eyes. “This? Walk in the park for us. Just another day at the Valentine Detective Agency.”

“Where only the greatest dicks in Diamond City call home,” Ellie giggled.

“Remind me to have a word with Deacon about teaching you that one,” Nora sighed and rolled her eyes.

Between them, however, their hands held tight.

And hours later, after Nora had gone and come back again, searching the whole of the City and then some to no avail, and Ellie had spent the day pacing the office, waiting for word or a sign, the two of them left for the evening, locking their shop up tight, before Nora’s hand found Ellie’s again and the pair headed off to find a late dinner.

Nora wasn’t sure where Nick was right now, as the lights came on and the shadows grew pronounced, but he was somewhere in the City, she was sure of that. The guards hadn’t seen him leaving and they’d had twice the number on duty today after a sighting of wild mongrels close to the gate.

He’d have to come back to the office sometime and when he did, Ellie and Nora would be waiting for him.

Until then, they’d hold their little family together, just the two of them, until their lost third found his way home.


	16. Under Lock and Key

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good Morning! This one took a bit of time to edit. I apologize if I missed anything.
> 
> As always, comments are most welcome! I love hearing from you, it's been very motivating. Thank you again for reading!

Nick watched them disappear from Third St. from the shadows of the rooftop. 

He’d waited for another hour after he’d seen Nora and Ellie leave the office for the night before he chanced going back in, but as his hand reached for the doorknob to the office kitchen, Nick thought better of it. Turning back the way he came, he reclaimed his hiding spot behind the small metal trailer where the grey cat he’d seen the day before lived.

The lazy animal looked up at him as he returned to the small nook he’d spent the day in, a tiny haven wedged between a stack of wooden crates and some old tires. 

“Sorry, Marlowe,” he apologized, retaking his seat. “Looks like we’ll be keeping company a while longer yet.”

Nick had no idea what the cat’s name really was, but after spending an afternoon in its presence, had decided on the one that fit best. The animal looked like it knew the whole town by the shrewd way it watched the City from the rooftops and there was a flippant way it swatted at Nick with its tail that made him feel like he was being worked over. It was plain and grey and mangy, but it looked like it could hold its own in a fight.

Marlowe gave a little sniff in his direction before turning over and going back to its nap.

“Well, a fine evening to you, too, pal,” Nick scoffed and lit a cigarette. “I see where sharing that last bit of my lunch got me. Sucker born every minute for your meals, I’d wager.”

Marlowe responded with no more than a deep sigh.

The nicotine did nothing for Nick as he puffed away on the smoke. He’d gone through an entire pack already and the hours between weren’t enough to allow for that soothing headiness the tobacco usually brought with it. But he pulled it dry, straight to the filter anyway. He had time to kill.

Nick had woken early that morning, before the sun had a chance to say hello. He’d showered and shaved in the little bathroom, bumping his arm more than once against the tiled wall as he’d gone about his daily ablutions. He’d felt better upon waking, and while the hot water had been a blessing, his mood took a dive when he’d reached for the soap. He’d already lathered it along his skin and was pulling it through his hair when he recognized the scent.

It was Nora’s.

He doused himself for several minutes in the scalding hot water afterwards, trying to get the ghost of her off him, but try as he might, he still caught haunting whiffs of it along his skin late into the evening. 

The soap had been the start of all this, he was sure of it. 

Toweling off with a sigh and a cringe against the unbearable ache that never seemed to leave him now, Nick had dressed with a lack of enthusiasm and made his way to the kitchen in search of breakfast.

He wasn’t sure what half the food in the fridge was supposed to be; the eggs were too large and a funny color and the meat a bit too much of a mystery to partake in. Everything they’d fed him at HQ had been cooked before he got to the table and while the flavors were different than he was used to, he ate everything offered with gusto. 

Nick had always been a grab and go kind of guy back in the day. He could make a mean pot of coffee and on occasion a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but otherwise, he ate on the run. Deli counters, coffee shops and the drugstore commissary counter across the street from the station were his usual haunts, and while he knew there some sort of noodle stand in the market, he didn’t keep the current currency he’d need to partake in that particular meal right now.

Instead, he’d gathered everything edible he could find from the cupboards and ate his breakfast out of boxes, wondering if it was the preservatives or the radiation that had kept that type of food fresh enough to eat. He’d even managed a cup of coffee, finding Piper’s statement about Nora’s secret stockpile to be true, when he’d opened a drawer and found it stuffed with individual packets and filters ready to use.

The coffee had been pure bliss.

As he started in on his third cup, however, Nick’s mind began to take him to the one place he didn’t want to go. He kept returning to that moment on the doorstep when Nora’s hand had been on his cheek and his was wrapped in her hair and, Jesus, when her lips had touched his skin, he’d felt himself melting like a quick burning candle but for need of her. It wasn’t the kind of kiss he’d wanted though. Not the kind of kiss he’d been too afraid to take.

He wanted that kiss she’d given to the shell of his other self; the one that was light and sweet and full of promises. The one that he could build a world on, the moment her lips would meet his. He’d give his hat for a kiss like that. A kiss like that from her.

Not that Nick hadn’t been kissed before. Jenny had done it often enough, but those kisses had been resigned to “hellos” and “goodbyes” and “haven’t seen you in a whiles”. They were quick and light and nice, to be sure, but anything more would have the gossip mags wagging their tails and her father had been adamant that Nick could only stick around so long as he didn’t sully his daughter’s reputation.

Society girls had it hard back then. 

Didn’t matter what town they lived in, everyone wanted them to be perfect and pretty, but god forbid, human. They moved through the crowds with grace and panache; style icons, and heiresses and Senator’s daughters alike. Never a hair out of place or a smile without the right shade of paint, because the cameras were always watching, and while they’d put on a show for the pen and ink club, behind the scenes they were constantly ready to snap from all the scrutiny.

Nick knew well enough what the wrong kind of kiss at the wrong kind of moment could do to Jenny. He’d seen it often enough in the society columns; glowing starlets once revered, now fallen from grace because they’d been photographed stepping out with the wrong guy or stepping into a hotel with the right one. He’d seen the way Jenny had blanched the first time someone had snapped the two of them together on a stroll home from dinner and he wasn’t about to give those dogs anything more newsworthy on her. 

So they’d kept things proper. Light. And it’d been nice. They went out, he walked her to her door, and with a quick peck good night he was gone, simple as that. Nothing to write home about, not for anybody.

Nora didn’t seem to have the same hang ups about the rules and regulations of society, however. She touched freely and openly as if the whole world could go hang itself on her business. She talked honestly and always said what she meant, at least, when she wasn’t tossing innuendo like it’d be going out of style. It was refreshing, but it was damn frightening, too. Fun as it was matching wits across sharp tongues, she’d left his tied more than once in the battle, and when she got serious, she was more dangerous than any force of nature he’d ever weathered.

Nick wasn’t sure if she’d thrown out the rule book or had just never been issued one, but when he tried to dodge her, she’d call him on it straight out and then left him room for hanging. He wasn’t used to being the guy under the lights, but she sure knew how to make him sweat.

Which, consequently, was why he was dreading her company today. 

She’d dropped another bomb on him, bigger now than the ones that had ruined the city. They needed to talk. More specifically, they needed to talk about them. And while he’d managed to delay the sentencing, the verdict was already cast and, in the end, he hadn’t escaped Death Row.

The more he sat there, the less he wanted to hear it; the less he wanted to know. The hour ticked later on his watch and he knew the sun would be shining in full soon and that was when he’d decided to lay low for the day, instead. He’d dashed off a quick note downstairs before raiding the kitchen again for supplies. This wouldn’t be his first stake out and Nick knew what he’d need to survive.

From there, he’d taken his sundries, trench coat and hat and slipped out the rooftop door to the little nook he’d found the last evening. He took in everything Diamond City had to offer that day from the safety of his second floor shadows; listening as the marketplace reopened and people began chatting in the streets. It was a little before ten when Ellie walked in and just after noon when Nora had showed. He’d heard them both enter, their voices echoing in the alley each time the door opened and his heart pounded as he waited them out.

Both Nora and Ellie had thought to check the roof at least once, but each time it’d been little more than a cursory glance and a sigh, before they’d ducked back inside and saved him the embarrassment of explaining his afternoon sitting spot. The stars had been out quite a while before the pair left for the last time and while he’d probably been safe to go back, Nick waited an extra, extra hour, just to be sure.

As he contemplated the last ten minutes of his self-imposed imprisonment, Nick’s hand went to fish out another cigarette from his pocket, but hit his keys instead. He pulled out the black leather heart and held it up to the stadium lights where silver and gold could reflect them.

Two keys.

Nick had been pondering the keychain for the better part of the day, his mind looking for clues to his current dilemma even as he sat doing nothing. 

One silver, one gold.

The gold one went to the door of his office. He knew that by experience now. But the silver one, the second one...why did the ring have two keys?

He supposed it could be for storage, or for some sort of drawer in the office downstairs. He’d had a key for his suitcase back in the day, but had the bad habit of locking it in the case. In truth, it could have been used to unlock any number of things, but for some reason, Nick was certain it went to a door. Another door somewhere out in the city.

It’d probably be just as frowned upon now as it had been before the bombs to go trying it in every lock he came to, but outside of asking Ellie about it, there was no other way to know for now.

The same answer he’d come to all day.

Tucking the keys back into his pocket, Nick decided he was safe enough that a five minute margin wouldn’t hurt him and he made his way back into his office.

There was a fresh pot of coffee on the counter and a new mug sitting beside it with a plate wrapped in tin foil nearby. Nick wasn’t sure which one of them had done the cooking, but the smell alone made his mouth water and throwing caution to the wind, he indulged. The meat and vegetables were close enough to what he remembered back at the diner he ate at on Fridays and he swiftly cleaned the plate before heading back for more coffee to polish it off. 

Satiated and satisfied, Nick considered heading downstairs to bed, but he’d been sitting all day now and was more than a little desperate for a walk. A quick check of his watch said it was nearing the midnight hour and it was probably late enough and dark enough he could get by with little trouble. Still, he strapped on his holster and slid on his coat, pulling the collar up, until it was standing high enough to mask most of his face. Heading downstairs, and towards the exit, Nick found a little tin box waiting for him on the floor by the doorstop. In Ellie’s looping scroll on a folded piece of paper; his name.

Reaching down, he cautiously picked it up. He breathed a sigh of relief when he realized there was nothing more to the note than his name and popped the top off the tin with more enthusiasm than he’d previously known. The inside was laid full of bottle caps, each bearing a scratched but colorful label. He wasn’t sure of the value, but at least he now had currency and he pocketed the little tin, more than a little amused at his new wallet. Feeling a bit more self-assured with that, he tied off the trench and slid his hat back on his head with the brim pulled low, before stepping out of the office and turning to lock the door. 

The view was different down here on the streets. Here, he got a good view of the people, and the ones that he’d seen by day were a bit different from the stragglers still around this late at night. As he walked, he could see some of the things the city tried to hide: A chem deal here, a couple necking there, both married, but not to one another. Nick decided that night was when the Green Jewel felt the most honest. Bright lights with a lot of shadows.

Even so, the place had a kind of song to it. The kind that, if you listened, you could hear people’s lives and problems as they rushed on by.

Nick took his time walking the city, trying to learn the streets again as he once had when he’d first come to Boston. Feet on the ground, eyes all around; fastest way to get acquainted with a new town. He passed a small, forgotten playground, complete with a broken down flying saucer behind a rusted fence. He passed Diamond City Radio and could hear the smooth voice of Travis, the DJ he’d grown accustomed to listening to every afternoon back at HQ. He passed a small lake in the ball field and a quaint little door with a bronze atom sign hanging outside. 

He walked the upper stands and the lower stands, and passed by the robot who sold noodles who seemed to repeat the same words no matter what questions it was asked. Nick’s feet carried him by a number of closed up shops and stands, to the far end of the market where it dead-ended into a bright red door, illuminated by a lamp that hung above it.

Huh. He felt bad for the owner. Kind of a dark part of the street to be coming home to if you forgot to leave the light on. Standing in one of the deep shadows the bright lamp of the door was casting, Nick looked the place up and down, trying to decide if it was some kind of warehouse or a mechanic’s place by the skeletal frame of a van on the roof and the bright yellow power armor jack out front.

Odder still; a small chalk drawing by the door in white that looked like a pair of wings.

Nick stood looking at the place a long while before deciding it could be some kind of house. If it was, then it might well be the biggest in the city, that is, if it was all one domicile. He wondered for a moment if perhaps the mayor lived there and if so, why weren’t they up in the high rises like all the other jerks he’d met up by that second floor pub, but just as he was about to shrug off the curiosity and walk away, he saw her.

There, on the rooftop, just above the rib-high wood fence, was Nora.

She looked like she’d recently stepped out of a shower, her towel dry hair fighting to move with the breeze. She was wearing another button down shirt, like he’d seen her tucked into back at HQ when she’d been sleeping off the chems, though this one had its sleeves. Even rolled, both the sleeves and shirt looked too big for her and he imagined it must be the kind of thing she slept in, before the need to _know_ if it were the kind of thing she slept in struck at that ache living inside him again.

He could almost smell the tobacco mixing with her soap from here.

She had a carnival glass tumbler between her hands, the iridescent colors flickering in the soft light of the city. He wondered if she had a collection of that old glass tucked away in there, liking the idea of a whole shelf full of tumblers and a water pitchers covered in blue rainbows. What it was filled with was anyone’s guess, but Nick thought it might be another shot of that good whiskey they’d shared back at the office. He liked to think they might have similar tastes in that. He wanted to share a drink with her now.

Scowling, Nick hugged the shadows and reprimanded himself for his thoughts. Get it together. Not supposed to be thinking about that. She’s wind; ethereal, untouchable, even as it pulls at your heartstrings every time it brushes by.

Still, he wanted another word for her than beautiful as she stood up there in her perch high above him, watching the lights and the stars in the sky. She was some kind of angel he was always admiring from afar.

“Hey!” A hefty yell came suddenly from across the courtyard. Nick startled and bit his lip to keep from crying out. “I thought that was you in the market yesterday! Man, Piper almost got me a good one...”

From their separate places of solitude, both Nick and Nora turned their full attention to one of the city guards, who was standing in the street and grinning up towards Home Plate with a wave. Nick recognized him as one of the guards Piper had stopped to talk with the day before. He wasn’t sure what Piper had told the man, but whatever it was, he seemed convinced it was a joke. 

The guy seemed jovial enough about it though, standing in the street chuckling as he was. He was a bit on the chubby side and much larger than any of the other guards Nick had seen. He had bright blond hair and ruddy cheeks and the kind of face Nick remembered seeing on the construction men sitting in the local bars with their buddies after a hard day’s work. 

“Hey, Harry,” Nora’s voice echoed around him in the near empty square. The smoke in it was thick and low, as if it’d been awhile since she’d last said anything. “Just got back to town. You doing all right?”

“Me? Oh yeah, I’m fine, fine. Got into a bit of trouble a week or so back,” his accent was just as big and boisterous as the rest of him. “So I gotta pull the night shift for a while.”

“Sorry to hear it,” Nora smiled in sympathy. “Anything I can do?”

“Nah, its fine,” Harry said, swinging his helmet like a shy kid swinging a lunchbox. “‘Sides, the boss just gave me the rest of the night off on account of that mongrel attack earlier. I already pulled a double.”

“Small victories,” she laughed. “Get some rest, then.”

“I was, ahh, actually thinkin’ bout headin’ over to the Dugout Inn for a spell,” he laughed back, his big hand on the back of his head. “Gonna relax and have a drink or two.”

“Well, tell Vadim I said to give you mine,” she grinned. “I think I’m in for the evening.”

“Hey! Thanks for that!” The guard sounded as if she’d just given him gold. “That’s swell of you, real swell.”

“You have a goodnight, Harry. See you around sometime,” Nora waved. 

“Hey, you too!” He returned the gesture, helmet still in hand. “And...and I’m really glad you guys are back. Ain’t the same city without ya.”

Nora smiled at that.

“Thanks, Harry. Means a lot right now.”

“Anytime!” He grinned. “Hey, you take care of yourself now, Mrs. Valentine. I’ll see ya later!”

Nick froze.

Mrs. _Valentine_.

Grey eyes flew up to look at Nora. She nodded at the guard in acknowledgement, and with a shy wave of her hand, disappeared from view as she walked away from the railing. 

She didn’t _deny_ it.

 _Why_ didn’t she deny it?

He began to shake and his knees gave out before Nick could stop them. He stumbled and fell back against the sheet metal wall behind him, his shoulders hitting it with a dull thud. His heart was pounding so hard against his ribs now, he could hear the drumbeat in his own ears.

Nick felt as if the wind had just been knocked out of him and he clutched at his chest, eyes wide and focused on the ground. His mind was racing; the evidence coming together all at once.

He…

She…

_“What is it with Valentines and three week vacations under gunfire!”_

Ellie had said that yesterday. He was sure now he’d heard it.

_Valentines._

Plural. Not one, but two.

That guard said _Mrs._ Valentine.

And Nora hadn’t denied it.

Her name wasn’t Connolly. Hadn’t been in a long time.

She had another name.

She had a silver ring. 

And he had the silver _key_.

What little breath Nick still had in him rushed out; the anguished sound an audible huff, as he slid down the wall and landed in the dirt.

It _wasn’t_ just love between them. It wasn’t just _love_.

The beginning of a sob hitched in his throat and Nick closed his eyes, pressing them with the heels of his palms to stop the sudden rush of tears from welling up. She wasn’t _just_ his partner. Friends and partners _hadn’t_ been enough; had _never_ been enough and...

No.

He didn’t dare think it. He _refused_ to think it.

But the detective that he was already knew it. There was no denying it. The evidence was so damning now, one look and any jury would convict.

She was married to someone else.

The girl he _loved_ was married to someone else; and not Deacon, nor John, whom he could have accepted and then dealt with the one-sidedness of his damn affections, because they were good men, good _corporeal_ men that he could see and had befriended and knew without a doubt they _deserved_ her over him, because they’d been with her longer, had stories carved in blood to their names by her side. It would have made sense to him that she’d been spoken for by one of them, by a man that he could measure up to standing side by side and know he’d just come out with the short stick. No loss through fault of his own, just bad timing. One wasn’t greater than the other, the other just showed up to her door first.

But this.

Not this.

She was married to the one man he could never compete with. The one who was greater, even as they were meant to be the same. The one that Nick would always fall short to when coming up against, because, similar as they may be, they weren’t similar enough. One was better than the other between them, and his competition had already won, while Nick was still trying to start the race. The one guy he wouldn’t have to compete with, if only he could _remember_ and take up that man’s life again.

But he couldn’t remember. His mind was a blank. 

And Christ, but it hurt right now to think on; his chest a gaping wound from ache, cored out and left a crying mess in streets. Never mind the first time he’d ever met her, or all the days and years in between. He couldn’t even remember asking her to be his, in the lasting, permanent sense.

There was nothing of her left to his mind, except an afternoon he’d spent with an angel on the stairs of Old North Church, hoping she couldn’t hear his heartbeat. 

He’d have asked that girl to marry him someday, he knew. He’d have taken that chance, however small. That woman with his smoke in her lungs who laughed like life mattered and looked at Nick like he might be worth more than just a guy with a big bay window and a stack of old books to his name. He’d have hemmed and hawed and drawn up enough courage in a mug full of whiskey to pour out the words and take a gamble she’d have his heart, all the while waiting breathlessly to hear her answer yes. 

He realized now with some finality, he’d slept more of his life away in that 200 year cooler than he ever imagined. He’d missed his own wedding day.

A wife. She’d been his _wife_.

That was the kind of Happily Ever After he’d never believed in. The kind meant for other people who were just more...with it, somehow. The kind that found their better half and danced the nights away in their dream lives made real, the moment they ran into that one spark that ignited their soul.

He’d had a life and a job that he’d loved, and that kind of love he’d figured was his sort’s lot. But loneliness got old after a while and books could only keep you so much company. After 36 years a bachelor, he’d finally found Jenny, the one girl who’d ever looked his way twice, and he thought nothing about buying that diamond for her, because he knew she was gold and not the brass he was born to be. And it didn’t matter to him that they’d been different; that she hadn’t shared his interest in reading and he hadn’t shared her interest in going to the social clubs. They were together, and that was enough for him.

It’d made him feel a little more whole.

But this...Nick didn’t know what to do with this.

He didn’t want Nora to be his wife because she _had_ to be. He wanted her to be his wife because she _wanted_ to be.

And the man that she wanted didn’t live inside him anymore. There was only Nick, still the same Nick he’d been in his tiny apartment, not even a big bay window and a stack of old books now to his name.

Stars didn’t love lesser planets.

No matter how much he wanted it to be otherwise.

He might as well wish for the moon.

Nick stumbled on the road and the near fall threw him from his thoughts, as he struggled to catch his balance again. For a moment, he looked around in confusion. He hadn’t even remembered getting up from the ground, let alone walking away from her red door down the dark end of the street, with the light still on. His melancholy had carried him out of the marketplace and he stood now in the empty side path, before the light of the Dugout Inn.

This was...some kind of bar by what Piper had told him the day before. Well, if ever Nick needed a drink, it was tonight. 

He might even try the moonshine.

An hour later, Nick sat at a little table by himself near the far wall. Two glasses of whiskey stood empty in front of him. The third glass was fresh, but still tasted like battery acid on his tongue.

Most of the commotion the barkeep had caused when Nick had first entered had all but died down, save for the occasional stare from a nosey patron. After the first twenty minutes of blustering welcomes and the same questions over and over again regarding his identity, Nick was tired of being asked if he was really the Great Synth Detective or not. His other shell was nearly a month empty now and Nick was feeling anything but great at the present. He felt he was a pretty poor excuse for a detective at the moment, too, despite the badge still clipped to his belt.

So, no. He wasn’t really the Great Synth Detective. He was just some guy drowning his sorrows in this sorry assed excuse for a whiskey, while sitting in a dive at the end of the world.

Nick took another sip of the liquor and cringed as it burned fire laced with nails all the way down his throat. He still felt sober enough to hate the whiskey. 

“Should have tried the moonshine,” he muttered to the table.

“Uh, hey…’scuse me,” a voice suddenly broke through the haze his head was currently wrapped in and Nick glared up at whomever was bothering him now. Couldn’t a fella just drink in peace without everyone asking his name. “Uh...Mister Valentine?”

Rather than be scared off by Nick’s scowl, the man who’d just interrupted Nick’s whiskey remained standing there. Nick squinted in the dim light of the bar, his eyes gone soft after sitting and staring at his glass for so long. Big guy. Blond hair. Ruddy cheeks.

It was Harry. Harry from the street in front of Home Plate. The place where Nora lived.

He was younger than Nick had originally thought. Maybe early twenties, at most. Nick couldn’t remember what it felt like to be that young anymore.

“You feelin’ okay there?” The friendly city guard took the seat across from Nick without being prompted. He set his beer on the table beside Nick’s whiskey. “Don’t mind me sayin’ this, but, you don’t look too good, y’know?”

“Sorry. Not feelin’ much like myself these days,” Nick answered quietly, swirling the whiskey in his tumbler. “How you doin’, Harry?”

“Oh, I’m pretty swell tonight, thanks for askin’,” Harry gave Nick a smile every bit as big and goofy as the rest of him. “I guess what Piper was sayin’ about ya was true, then. You’re a real live person now and everything, huh?”

“Something like it, at least,” Nick raised his glass in a depreciated salute and a shrug of his shoulders. “Not much left between my ears these days but this ugly mug.”

“Yeah, Piper said something about that, too,” Harry nodded empathizing. “Said ya had amnesia or something. What’s that like?”

For a moment, Nick looked at Harry in wonder. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh or slug the guy.

“Not so good,” he finally admitted. “Sorry to say, if we do this often, I can’t remember it.”

“Oh, no, don’t even worry about it. We don’t hang out, really. Ever,” Harry spoke with such dumb honesty, Nick couldn’t help but to like him. “But this is nice, y’know? Usually, I’m just the guy sayin’ hey to you and the Mrs. before you go runnin’ off from the city again.”

Harry missed the pained look on Nick’s face as he continued talking.

“I was just sayin’ to Mrs. Valentine tonight when I saw her up on the roof of that house of yours,” he was gesturing with his beer bottle now. “Diamond City just ain’t the same without you dicks in it. The Lady of the Commonwealth and the Great Synth Detective, well, the Great Formerly-synth Detective now, anyways. I know you’re both big celebrities and everything, but you’ve always been real nice people, y’know? Genuine. I liked that.”

Nick took another sip, polishing off his whiskey. Harry nodded to the barmaid, Scarlett, and motioned for another round. As he turned his attention back to Nick, he frowned for a moment.

“Say, why ain’t you wearin’ your ring?” Harry pointed to Nick’s left hand. “Man, I remember the day you guys came back to town with those on. Don’t see that kinda thing around anymore...just old world stuff, y’know? Always thought it was real sweet, you two keeping up the tradition and all.”

Harry looked at Nick with real concern now.

“You didn’t lose, it didja’?”

Even three whiskeys in, with a fourth on the way, Harry’s words sparked something and the last puzzle piece fell into place.

“No..,” he winced against the pain in his chest as it refreshed itself; a more painful bite than with his whiskey. “Nora’s got it.”

Nick closed his eyes a moment and let his breath run slowly out. 

“I must have dropped it,” his realization was said out loud, as if in explanation. “When we were attacked. That’s why Deacon had it. And he gave it to Nora…”

God, why hadn’t he noticed earlier. The signs were so glaringly there now he shouldn’t have missed them. 

“Oh,” Harry said, reaching a massive paw across the table and patting Nick’s shoulder in sympathy. “Well, at least it ain’t been lost, that’s the important thing. It’d be hard to find something special like that again, believe you me.”

Nick nodded solemnly in agreement.

“I hope you don’t mind me sayin’ so,” Harry looked embarrassed now. “But I’m glad you two lovebirds made it back here together. Can’t imagine seeing one of you without the other anymore. I mean, I know we used to joke with you guys about it, but I’m real glad you two hooked up an all. You were always a real good guy to me.”

Nick looked up at that. Harry smiled at him.

“I know I prob’ly don’t look it now, but back when I was a kid, I got picked on all the time on account of my size. Some of the Upper Stand boys could get real mean when they wanted to, y’know? And nobody said nothin’,” he said. “This one time, they threw me in the reservoir and just kept dunkin’ me under. Really thought I was gonna drown when you stepped in and cuffed em’ upside their heads like they weren’t nothin’ special. After they ran off, you got me cleaned up and even took me for a bowl of noodles to make up for it.”

Harry shrugged.

“You prob’ly didn’t think nothin’ of it, you were always doin’ stuff like that for people, but for me, it was the first time anybody ever did somethin’ nice like that. I ain’t smart enough to be a detective or nothin’, but I joined the city guard when I got old enough. Hoped I might be able to do somethin’ of the good you did me, someday,” Harry grinned at him now. “I ain’t so dumb though. I know not everybody in the City was real nice to ya, and I was real happy for ya when Nora started comin’ around. Oh man! And that wedding! Woo! That was somethin’ else.”

“Tell me about it,” Nick’s voice was quiet now, his eyes focused once again on the fresh glass of whiskey Scarlett set in front of him. It hurt to even think about, but he had to know.

“Was a real shocker, let me tell ya’,” Harry’s eyes lit up as he continued. “Here I am coming out to post for the day, and I end up in this crowd of folks lined up just to watch you two get hitched! I swear, everybody in the City showed up. And there you two were with Pastor Clements, tyin’ the knot.”

Nick took another swig of whiskey.

“What happened next?”

“Oh you know,” Harry waved his hand. “You had on your hat and coat and Nora was wearing this real cute little number--I ain’t never seen her in a dress before, y’know. She looked good! Real good. And you two, man, you just looked so happy.”

Harry saluted Nick now with his beer.

“Gives me hope I might get a chance at somethin’ like that someday,” Harry’s good mood shifted when he finally noticed Nick’s posture. 

The detective was seated, shoulders slumped forward and eyes to the table. He looked like a man, defeated. Harry’s jovial voice went soft as realization hit him.

“And...and...you don’t remember nothin’ about it do ya’.”

It wasn’t a question and Nick didn’t give an answer.

“Aw, jeez,” Harry’s ruddy complexion turned bright red. “That must be tough. I’m sorry ‘bout that, Nick. Real sorry. Any chance it might come back to ya?”

Nick sighed and shook his head.

“No,” he admitted in misery. “And, I’m starting to think it never will.”

“Hey,” Harry reached across the table again, placing a reassuring hand on Nick’s shoulder. “Y’can’t think all bad shit like that. Ya still got Nora, right? She ain’t goin’ nowhere. That girl, she’s one in a million, I can tell.”

“Yeah,” Nick finished off the glass of whiskey. The taste was bitter in his mouth and the burn throbbing. “She is at that.”

They drank together late into the early morning hours, when Harry finally called it quits and Nick was too tanked to stand without swaying. Harry stood, a whole head and a half taller than the detective, sliding an arm around his waist in support. Waving goodbye to Vadim, the pair stumbled out into the streets and Harry walked Nick all the way back to his office.

“Better to sleep it off in here, I figure,” he chuckled and winked at Nick as he took the office keys and unlocked the door. “Don’t want to catch an earful from the Mrs. for keepin’ you out half the night.”

Harry led Nick into the office and helped him to the lonely bed beneath the stairs. As if handling a doll, the large man untied the belt of the trench coat and slipped it from Nick’s shoulders, placing Nick’s keys in the pocket, before tucking it up in a neat half fold which he laid on the end of the bed. He coaxed Nick to sit down and helped him with his shoes, before heading into the bathroom which he barely could get into, and returning with a glass of water. Nick took it gratefully and emptied it, which Harry then immediately refilled, before setting it on the floor at the head of the bed.

“You get some rest, Mister Valentine. Vadim’s whiskey is rough, but ain’t nothin’ a good sleep can’t cure,” Harry assured him, lifting one of Nick’s legs and then the other into the bed. “I had a real swell time tonight, drinkin’ with ya and all. We should do it again sometime. I ain’t never got to have a drink with ya before, on account of you being a robot and all. Man, think of all the stuff you can do now...we should get noodles again sometime! I mean...if ya wanna.”

Even through his drunken haze, Nick couldn’t help but feel touched at the sentiment. He held his hand out to the giant guard he’d spent the evening with.

“I think I might like that,” he nodded as Harry shook his hand with enthusiasm. “Thanks, Harry...for everything.”

“Anytime, Mister Valentine, anytime,” he grinned that big boyish grin of his. “And for what it’s worth...ain’t nothin’ important’s changed about ya. Now ya just got more hair.”

Harry left after that, and as Nick fell to sleep with the help of Vadim’s whiskey, he wondered if what that kid he’d once saved in the reservoir said was true.


	17. Call to Arms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another update for you! Same day service!

Nora woke to the sound of knocking. 

The noise ripped her from sleep. Her eyes shot open and for a moment, she forgot where she was, still caught in a nightmare where she’d been laying flat on the pavement, bleeding out with Nick nowhere in sight. The soft colored lights above her registered as familiar and with a sigh of relief, she realized she was still in Home Plate.

The knocking came again, this time, a little louder.

Moving the empty glass of bourbon she’d downed last night in the hopes of finding rest, Nora squinted at her Pip Boy on her nightstand. It was just a little before nine in the morning yet. Bit early for Piper to come calling and too late for the early bird that was Ellie.

Flicking on the light switch, Nora stood as her home illuminated under the white lights, flicking the sheets back over her side of the mattress in hopes of retaining what little warmth there was there. The second pillow lay covered in the otherwise empty space beside where she had slept, waiting for her return.

She smoothed out the old shirt of Nick’s that she wore to bed, and patting down the sleep-wild strands of her hair, making sure she was presentable enough, before opening the door.

The sunlight flooded in. Preston stood on her doorstep. His rifle was on his back.

“What’s happened?” She asked immediately, feeling the heckles already rising in her back. 

She moved aside quickly so that he could enter. Preston stepped in and took his hat off. Preston never took his hat off. 

Before she shut the door, Nora noted the handful of Minutemen recruits rushing around the marketplace and grabbing their gear.

“Preston,” she turned back to him the moment the door closed again.

“A call to arms came over the radio last night,” he started. “All available Minutemen are currently on their way to the old Longfellow Bridge.”

“Raiders?” She asked, trying to force down the panic she felt rising in her belly.

“No,” Preston shook his head, looking at the floor before meeting her eyes again. “We have reports of a synth army gathering around the C.I.T ruins. I spoke with General Deegan on Piper’s ham radio. We think...we think Justin Ayo is with them.”  


Nora’s breath left her body in one harsh exhalation. She felt oddly exposed all of a sudden and wrapped her arms around herself to hide the slight tremor in her fingers.

“Are you sure?” She asked quietly. “Did one of the scouts see him?”

Preston hesitated.

“No,” he frowned. “But they found a message he’d left there.”

“A message,” Nora repeated, her brows furrowing. “What kind of message?”

“It’s not important,” Preston was looking at his boots again. “But...we think he left it for you, Nora.”

“For me,” she breathed and leaned back against her door for support.

“The General seemed pretty certain,” he nodded, empathizing with what she was going through just then. He’d been there at Mass Fusion in the end. He knew what Justin Ayo meant to her. “It’s an open declaration of war and he’s got an army of bots standing at the ready.”

Nora cursed herself for a fool. 

“I should have killed that man when I’d had the chance,” her anger blatant even through the whisper. 

Preston fidgeted before her, his fingers tightening on the brim of his hat.

“I know this couldn’t have come at a worse time for you,” he swallowed. “You can say no. Know one would think any less of you for saying no to...this. The Castle is already sending out requests for aid from all available allies.”

Nora didn’t hesitate.

“How much time before we hit the road?”

“Twenty minutes good for you?” He watched the fire igniting behind her eyes. As much as Preston had wanted her to say no this one time, he couldn’t help but admire her for saying yes.

“I’ll meet you at the front gate,” she nodded, already walking towards the large weapon locker she kept near her workbench. “Don’t leave without me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Ma’am,” he nodded and placed his hat back on his head, before heading out of Home Plate to meet Piper. 

Nora never even heard him leave. 

She worked through the silence that fell afterwards, the only sound in her ears the pounding beat of her blood, as it rushed through her veins in her anger. She didn’t try to calm down this time. She needed the adrenalin for the journey ahead.

Grabbing her postman’s bag, Nora stuffed it full of various ammo, wonderglue, pulse grenades and stimpaks. The Wonderglue and Stimpacks were good for on the run healing. Stimpaks to stop the bleeding and the glue for when the Stimpaks ran out. For once, a product did what it’d been advertised to do: Wonderglue stuck to everything and it stuck instantly. It made for a quick and effective wound sealant when needed.

From the locker, she pulled out her combat gear: A pair of jeans, black canvas sneakers, a pair of fingerless leather gloves, a grey-blue tank top and a faded red scarf. As she pulled herself into the clothing, she silently thanked Tinker Tom and his ingenuity. He’d fitted these clothes with his thin ballistic weave and while it left her looking helpless to the enemy, it gave her nearly as much protection as a suit of power armor from a hit. 

For all the actual suits of power armor she’d helped the Minutemen reclaim out in the Commonwealth, Nora never wore one into battle. She remembered Nate telling her once that wearing it was like fighting in a giant trash can that moved. She’d never been able to adjust to the disconnect between where her limbs were really at when she needed them in those suits, and as such, they limited, rather than increased her efficiency on the field. She would always be grateful for that day Tom had presented her with the clothes she now wore. Nora couldn’t imagine trying to maneuver around in a hulking power suit. She was feeling claustrophobic enough as it was.

Still, she’d always admired Paladin Danse’s ability to live in his heavy armor, as if it’d been a second skin. 

Nora’s frown deepened at the thought. She’d never liked the Brotherhood, nor its ways, and they’d threatened the Commonwealth one too many times to let them keep going. But from the moment she’d stumbled across Danse and his team back at the Cambridge police station, she’d felt an odd sense of responsibility when he looked at her with those damn puppy dog eyes. He seemed like the kind of guy that didn’t have many friends, just compatriots, and when it didn’t completely go against her good judgement, she had tried to aid him on occasion.

Even when she’d had to stomach his near constant xenophobia. The irony of his life was still fresh in her mind to this day.

When word got around that he’d been a synth all along, Nora had come running. She’d met Elder Maxon once, firsthand, and she knew what that kind of fanaticism would lead to. She’d found Danse in time to save him from Death, but what little friendship that held them together ended when she’d ordered the Prydwen’s destruction. 

As goofy as she’d always found his boy scout routine, Nora had to admit it hurt a little when he’d told her in no uncertain terms that he hated her guts.

She finished dressing under that depressing thought, zipping up her jeans and smoothing down the thin weave of ballistic fibers hidden in the grey-blue cotton of the tank top. Though she couldn’t see it, Nora knew she’d just pulled on the symbol of her station and anyone standing behind her in the fight would know it, too. Deacon had painted a set of white wings on the back of the tank as a joke, while she’d been sleeping at HQ between missions, and it’d since become her mark in both the Railroad chalk drawings and on her General’s flag for the Minutemen. 

They called her the Lady of the Commonwealth after that. The Angel that brought down the Institute, raining fire into that dark den of near biblical proportions. Nora didn’t care what anyone called her anymore. She just wanted Justin Ayo dead.

Once she was dressed, Nora strapped on the right leather shoulder guard she wore for close combat, a heavy leather holster that contained her pistol, her pocketknife and a bladed tire iron that strapped flat against the side of her thigh. She slid the postman’s bag over her shoulder, finding it strangely light despite its load. It was then that Nora remembered she’d used up John’s emergency kit. That thought was a little sad now; a piece of protection lost before the battle. She’d carried his kit with her into conflicts for years and had only needed to use it once.

“Once was enough,” she said to the empty room.

Shoes laced and ready, Nora reached for the heavy rifle, slinging it over her left shoulder, before taking the last of her battle gear from the locker. She set the leather of her Minuteman’s hat on her crown, pulling it down by the brim as she had thousands of times before; the action always a comfort in dark times such as these. She’d never taken to the General’s tricorn, much as Hancock begged her to wear it so that they’d be a matched set when they’d run together. She preferred to wear the same hat as the rest of her army.

She’d picked up the hat from one of the fallen men just outside the Museum of Freedom in Concord the day she’d met Preston, the last standing Minuteman of his time. She’d taken it as a reminder of the courage she’d found in that moment, when she’d been a scared woman with a pistol, who answered a call for aid.

Nora snorted at that.

She was still just a scared woman with a pistol, but she found her bravery easier to come by nowadays when people called for her help. The fear would always be with her, but it was no longer her own death that scared her, no, she’d come to terms with her own mortality years ago. Now, it was the fear of losing others that sent her running into battle. Her friends, her family, the good people of the Commonwealth; Nora was more frightened of losing them than of any Deathclaw or Justin Ayo alive. If her bullets could mean the difference between losing a life and saving one, she’d take aim and pull the trigger wherever they needed to go.

Nora knew what it meant to be afraid. She didn’t want anyone else to know that type of fear if she could help it.

Armed and ready, she reached down and retrieved Nick’s shirt off the floor. For a moment, she just held it, rubbing the soft, worn material between her fingers. Closing her eyes, she prayed for a different type of courage to fill her now. There was one more thing she needed to do before she left the City.

Folding the shirt neatly, she set it on one of the stairs up to the bedroom, smoothing her palm over it one last time, before leaving it behind and stepping out her door. She turned the keys in the lock and pocketed them, turning into the marketplace and heading for the office.

Nora took in everything as if seeing it for the first time, or the last, as she passed through the marketplace. The people therein stopped in their business and grew quiet as she went by, recognizing the familiar look of the former General and knowing without words needing to be said that when she wore her wings, it wasn’t their friend and neighbor walking by. This was the Lady of the Commonwealth and she was going back to war.

Nora tipped her hat in acknowledgement as she passed by the people she knew. She could see the fear mixed in with the knowing respect that she was fighting for them today. 

“God save the Commonwealth,” she murmured, shaking her head as she stepped out of the sunlight of the market and into the deep blue shadows of Third Street. “Lord knows these people have been through enough.”

Despite making this walk more times than any other, Nora hesitated for a moment before the neon sign of the office. Its image had burned itself into her mind years ago, but each time she saw it, she fell in love with it all over again. Today was no exception.

Squaring her shoulders, Nora took out her keys, and slid the gold one into the knob.

“Nick?” She called softly as she stepped into the room. Ellie wouldn’t be in for another hour yet and the lights were on. A good sign. “Nick, are you here?”

She heard a chair from the kitchen scrape against the wood floor. A hesitation. Then, the muffled sound of footsteps coming down the stairs. Nora breathed a sigh of relief, a moment before he stepped around the corner from the back hallway. 

The both froze and stared, taking each other in, before talking in unison.

“Are you alright?” She asked.

“What’s going on?” He swallowed.

“Where were you yesterday?” She couldn’t stop the words from falling out.

Nick looked like hell. His hair, which he’d kept finger swept into the style before the bombs as best he could without aid of a hair tonic, was currently a bit bedraggled, the brown strands shifting forward and falling across his forehead. His clothes were rumpled and loose, as if he’d slept in them, and his tie was nearly as low on his chest as it had been when he’d lived in his other body. He didn’t look like he’d showered or shaved just yet, the five o'clock shadow along his jaw rather striking. In his hand, he held the remains of a cup of coffee and his feet were distractingly bare.

He’d shed some of his armor.

And she’d put hers back on.

“I was..,” he started, setting the mug down on her desk. His voice sounded raw. “I was out. Had a few drinks with Harry last night at the Inn. One too many, maybe.”

“Oh,” the soft word all she could think of to say.

Nick looked at her a long, hard moment. The grey of his eyes slipping over every detail of her current attire. He looked calm, but there was confusion in that gaze. And a little worry.

“Where are you going?” His eyes were fixed on the scar now visible atop her left shoulder. 

The skin there was darker than her usual pallor and angled in as if something sharp had caught and been dragged from the shoulder down and across to some unknown distance beneath the tank top. He wondered how far it went. He wondered how deep it’d cut.

“Nowhere good,” she admitted. Honesty was always the best way to go here. It was the only way to go. “There’s been a call to arms over Freedom Radio. I’m headed out with Preston in a few minutes to meet up with the rest of the army.”

“Oh,” the soft word all he could think of to say.

Nora watched as his shoulders rose and fell alongside his breathing. He was scared. The fear passed quickly, however, and his brows furrowed in resignation.

“Well, just let me splash some water on my face and grab my coat,” he started to head for the back hallway. “Won’t take me long to get ready.”

“No.”

“What?” He paused before he hit the hallway and turned back to her in confusion. “What do you mean, “no”?”

“I mean, you’re not going,” she said softly. 

She could see his gears turning now as he processed her words. She gave him time to think it through. His anger won over his logic.

“The hell I’m not!” He shook his head. “Of course I’m going! I’m not going to let you do...whatever this is that you’re doing, all alone.”

Nora felt the familiar pull of her chest ache. That was the Nick she knew and loved talking now. It wouldn’t change her course, however, no matter how sweet the gesture.

“I won’t be alone,” she responded. “I’m leaving the city with Preston and we’ll meet up with the Minutemen by early afternoon if we hurry.”

“Then take me with you,” he argued. “I can handle another walk.”

“No,” she shook her head. “I won’t. You have to stay here.”

“Why?” His voice rose. “Think I can’t handle myself out there now, is that it? I’ve survived shootouts with old world gangsters and a whole nest full of ferals! The gun and badge aren’t just for show, sweetheart.”

“It’s not about that Nick,” she tried again. “You don’t understand, this time—”

“Is it because of yesterday?” He was pacing now, running a hand through his disheveled hair in frustration. “That was just...that was something else entirely. I just needed a day, but I’m good for this, Nora, I swear it.”

“I can’t risk having you out there right now, Nick,” she could feel the desperation in his words and it hurt to bench him now. “I’m sorry. I...I just stopped in to say goodbye.”

“Goodbye..,” he breathed the word as if trying to find another meaning in it.

“I have to go,” she looked at him in earnest. Her time was growing short and Preston would be waiting for her.

“And I,” he gestured helplessly. “I’m just supposed to accept that?”

“No,” she shook her head again. “You don’t have to accept it. I just need you to understand it.”

Her words hit Nick right in the sternum and he gaped at her. Nick couldn’t understand it. He didn’t understand anything anymore.

And something broke inside him then. 

“You...you’re a real piece of work, you know that?” He scowled at her now, feeling his blood begin to boil as he hit a dead end with her. “Wasn’t the last month enough for you? You were sleeping at Death’s Door not even a week ago and here you are strapping iron back on for another round!”

She flinched at that and for a moment, Nick knew he’d hit too close to the mark. As the ache in his chest flooded through him and the urge to erase the look of betrayal across her features made his fingers twitch, he raged on to drown out the pain it caused him.

“You’re supposed to be retired! Why can’t you just let Preston and that of his army handle it?” He taunted, gesturing angrily at her arm. “What you suddenly decide you don’t have _enough_ scars?”

“That’s...that’s not fair,” she choked out, one gloved hand masking the old wound in something like shame.

“Isn’t it? I’ve heard a hundred stories about the bullet holes you’ve been pumped full with and all the stupid shit you’ve done while bleeding out,” his voice rose wildly as he spoke, the words falling faster than he could think about them. “Seems to be the kinda story all your friends like to share. Hell, Hancock had a dozen of them alone! And they’re all so goddamned proud of that fact, like your blood on the mat is something to cheer for! Well, I won’t do it!”

“Nick, please,” she begged him to stop. “I’m trying to tell you, I just want you to be—”

“You can’t just leave me here hanging and ask for understanding with a goddamned rifle strapped to your back!” he was yelling now against the fear he felt for her. “That’s not how this works. Dammit, Nora, you act like we’re thick as thieves, like we’re still partners...but partners are supposed to trust each other! That means it goes both ways, not down this damn one way street you keep driving. You, you’re holding all the cards and I...I can’t live like this anymore. I’m tired of trying to!”

Nora was stunned by his accusations. Hadn’t she thought the same thing just yesterday? Nick never gave her the chance to regroup, however, using her momentary shock at his words to round on her again.

“You wanna play your war games? Fine. I won’t get in your way,” he snarled, turning his back to her and pointing towards the exit. “There’s the door. Go. Get out and leave me be. I’d tell you to try and not get yourself killed out there, but why would you start listening now?”

The room fell quiet around them. For a moment, Nick thought she might turn and leave, but before he could turn back and apologize, he felt her arms slip beneath his. Nick stilled, the weight of Nora pressed into his back shocking him back towards something like calm.

“Hey, Valentine,” her love song came quiet and unbidden against the shirt on his back. Nick held his breath, wondering if it was the last time he’d ever hear its tune. “Please...don’t leave it hanging between us like this.”

Her words felt painfully familiar, but still, there was nothing more to it than that.

“I know you’re angry with me right now, and you have every right to be. There’s still so much we haven’t said and I don’t have time to say it anymore,” she started, despairing all the hours she’d wasted already not telling him the truth. “I’m not leaving you because I want to. The thing that’s out there today...it’s the one thing I don’t want anywhere near you. And it’s selfish of me, I know that, but I can’t fight it if I don’t know you’re somewhere safe and far from its reach.“

He felt her ragged sigh behind him and his heart was breaking all over again. Christ, he was helpless right now.

“You can hate me for that if you need to,” she admitted sorrowfully. “But I’d rather risk you hating me than risk losing you again.”

Nick closed his eyes against his own grief. He knew he couldn’t stop her now.

“Would you have taken _him_ with you?” He asked quietly, his chest full of shame and disappointment. “Would you have taken _me_ with you, if I were still him?”

“No,” she shook her head, noting how he talked about that other body as if it were a different person now. “He wouldn’t have liked it for a minute. But he’d have let me go, because he understood.”

Nick cringed to keep from crying again. 

“Just go, Nora,” he whispered in defeat. “And let me be. I’m not that guy anymore.”

“No, you’re not,” she chuckled miserably. “Angry or otherwise, he would have walked with me to the front gate.”

Nick wondered what sort of rituals the two of them once had between them. He couldn’t imagine standing there, seeing her disappear from his sight.

“I won’t watch you do this. I can’t,” he shook his head. “You’ll have to get used to walking alone from now on.”

He felt her tense. She breathed out one short breath.

And he breathed in for both of them again as she pressed her lips to his spine. He felt her kiss straight up the line of his back, his skin growing gooseflesh at the contact. He trembled and her hands shook as they slid away from him.

“Yeah,” he heard her say, softly. “I guess I will.”

Nora walked straight to the door and opened it, taking a final look back at him. She wished he would turn around. She wanted to see those grey eyes one more time.

“Goodbye, Nick,” she murmured.

And as the door slid shut, she would have sworn she’d heard his voice before the latch caught.

“Goodbye, Nora.”

She stood outside the office a long moment, before stepping back out, into the shadows of Third Street, and leaving what remained of her heart in pieces by his door.

The first step was always the hardest, and this would be a pain she’d carry for the rest of her days, but angry as he was with her, Nick Valentine would still be alive at the end of the day, never knowing that he’d just killed her.

Reaching into her postman’s bag, Nora pulled out a pair of mirrored sunglasses she’d left therein, and slid them on, under her Minuteman’s hat. She would mourn her losses behind their safety and let them shield her sorrows from the people who needed her to be strong right now.

It was a trick Deacon used often enough, and while she’d always hated the way it masked him off from the rest of the world, she understood now what a useful barrier they could be. On the outside, she looked every bit the calm warrior the people expected and that was all that mattered.

Nora made her way toward the front gates, taking Pastor Clements’s hand as she went by him. She wasn’t a religious woman, not by a long shot, but she’d prayed often enough out there in the Commonwealth, she might as well have been.

As Nora’s foot hit the stairs leading up and out of the marketplace, she heard a woman’s voice behind her yell “Good Luck!”, and she gave a small wave of thanks over her shoulder in response.

When she’d reached the top of the stairs, Nora did turn around then. She breathed in the sight of her city as she always did before she left it, hoping she’d return someday to see it all again. If there was any justice left in the world, she’d be back to see the lights by morning. The lights of the City would always draw her back, as would the heart of a man who still lived there.

Even if that heart held nothing but hatred for her now.

Descending into the shadows of the stairwell leading out of the stadium, Nora caught sight of Preston, rifle still on his back, and Piper, a pair of binoculars and an old flash camera around her neck. She should have known Piper wouldn’t sit this one out. She’d been there at the Mass Fusion event and no doubt she’d be there for this one. Not even the threat of imminent death could keep her off a byline.

Beside them stood five recruits, all fresh faced and frightened. Diamond City was an easy starting point for them, with days spent nose to the rule books and learning the chains of command before they’d be sent out to the Castle for a hellish stay with Cait and Ronnie Shaw. The two women had a knack for whipping the Minutemen, both new and old, into shape and the army had been stronger and more prepared for what lay ahead because of them.

These kids hadn’t been to the Castle yet, however. They’d never left the security of Diamond City’s famed green walls. They hadn’t gone through hell with Cait and Ronnie and come out the other side ready for anything the world could throw at them.

And they were scared.

She heard one of them whisper when they saw her, as she crested the last step out of shadows and stepped into the entryway before the gate. 

“It’s the General!” The girl hissed to her friend, wide eyed and in nervous now.

“She’s not the General, anymore, Margot,” the boy whispered back.

“What do we call her then?” Asked another girl, the smallest among them, with blond hair in tiny pigtails.

“Nora,” Nora told them as she stopped before the group. “When you’re with me, use my name. And if you need to, you scream it and I’ll be there.”

She tweaked the hat of one of the kids as they looked at her like the legend they thought she was.

“You got a name, kid?” She looked at the girl with pigtails, who turned bright red under her gaze.

“A-ashley, Miss Nora, Ma’am,” she replied.

“You from Diamond City, Ashley?” Nora asked, giving the girl her brightest smile.

“N-no, ma’am,” she shook her head, pigtails flying. “I’m from Oberland Station, originally. I came here when I turned sixteen.”

“And how old are you now, Ashley?”

“I’ll be seventeen in two months,” she looked abashed.

God, so _young_. Why were they always so young?

“Oberland Station,” Nora said thoughtfully. “That’s a rough outpost. Used to be a lot of skirmishes with the Gunners and Super Mutants up that way. You must be pretty tough to have survived all that growing up.”

The other recruits looked at their friend suddenly, as if seeing her for the first time. They seemed impressed.

“I...I suppose so, ma’am,” she nodded.

“Are you scared right now, Ashley?” Nora asked her softly. “Be honest.”

Ashley hesitated only a moment.

“A...a little bit, yeah,” she swallowed. “I ain’t never been in a battle like this before.”

Nora put her hand on the girl’s shoulder. 

“There’s nothing wrong with being afraid,” she told her. “Being afraid means you still like being alive and that’s never a bad thing. Don’t be ashamed of that fear, but when the battle comes, try to find the bravery to take aim, even if your arms are shaking. And don’t forget how much you want to live. That kind of thought can move mountains.”

“Were you ever afraid of battle, ma’am?” One of the other kids asked.

“I’m always afraid of battle,” she smiled at them. “But I go in with the courage of knowing I’m fighting so that I can keep living once it’s done.”

The recruits took to that, smiling back at her.

“I’m from Diamond City,” Nora announced to the group. “And while you’re here, that means you’re with me. I watch out for my friends and I expect them to do the same for each other. You stick together today and stay behind me and we’ll all fight to come back to our lives here when we’re finished, all right?”

“Yes, ma’am!” They saluted, their rifles shifting on their young frames.

“All right, troops,” Preston grinned behind Nora, gesturing towards the gate. “Let’s head out!”

The new Minutemen cheered and filed out of the entryway into the sunlight; confidence in their every movement. Nora smiled as she watched them go, hanging back with Piper.

“Always on good behavior, aren’t you. That was real nice of you, Blue,” she said quietly. “For all I’ve seen you do over the years, I think I finally understand why people always seemed to be following you. Not many folks would have bothered doing what you just did.”

Nora didn’t look at her. Her eyes were still following the kids in the ballpark courtyard as Preston did a final inspection pass on their gear.

“It’s not enough,” Nora breathed out. “It’s never enough. If one of them falls, tell Preston I want to be the one to tell their families. I’ll take responsibility for them now and everything that brings with it.”

Piper sighed and rubbed her hand between the wings painted on Nora’s back. She wouldn’t argue with the woman. Piper knew how seriously the Lady of the Commonwealth took the lives of the people around her. The reporter had been there to see it firsthand, many times over. This was hardly the first time they’d stood at these gates side by side.

And speaking of which…

“Are we..,” Piper looked back over her shoulder at the empty stairwell. “Are we expecting _anyone_ to see us off today?”

Jesus, they were a moment from heading out. Nick was cutting things close right now.

“No,” Nora’s answer startled Piper. “No one’s coming to see us off today.”

Piper’s heart sank and though she couldn’t see her friend’s eyes where they hid behind mirrored glasses, the reporter was shrewd enough to understand the meaning of her words and how much Nora must be hurting right now.

Tentatively, she slid her fingers against Nora’s, taking her slender hand into her own. 

“Well, you know I never did like long goodbyes,” Piper shrugged and tried a smile. “Shall we go together, then?”

They stood before the gates of Diamond City, holding hands, staring out of the shadows into the sunlight.

“Together,” Nora agreed.

The stepped in unison, passing beneath the gates, and leaving their beloved hometown behind.

As they walked, Piper continued to keep her hold on Nora. Someone had to. She wanted Nora to feel that someone shared her desire to return. It was something the other woman looked for, some sort of personal reassurance that she could still come back someday, secure in the knowledge that her home was still there and not some crater in the ground.

She put on a tough exterior, sure, but the reporter knew better. They’d been friends for so many years now, Piper knew where the holes lived in Nora’s armor and though few and far between, which ones she needed someone else to patch up now and then. She’d woken up with nothing in this world and over time had rebuilt a life complete with friends who were like family. Every time she stepped out of that City alone, there was a chance she wouldn’t make it back. It was a small thing to ask for the reassurance someone would be waiting for her return. Someone who would remind her to come back.

The reporter had figured that out about her friend a long time ago.

Which is why Piper knew this was the first time Nora had ever left the City, without Nick standing behind her, waving from the gate.

There was no one standing there to remind her she needed to live through this, because someone was still waiting for her come back home someday.

And Piper didn’t like the thought of that.


	18. For Her Valentine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew, this one took a while to edit! I still think there's an error in there I missed...sorry for that.
> 
> As always, thank you for your comments. I am reading them as I'm cranking out the chapters and I really appreciate them. : )

Nick sat in Nora’s chair at the office, staring at the photograph above her desk.

His coffee had long since gone cold.

The odd looking couple before him just smiled, the woman caught by the camera, a moment before her amusement was given voice.

Nick tried to imagine what he’d said to make her laugh.

He tried to imagine her, in that photo, wearing the little dress Harry had mentioned the night before, over a tumbler of whiskey and a chat. The one she’d worn to the wedding.

He didn’t doubt she’d looked beautiful. She was always beautiful; inside and out.

She’d been beautiful when she’d stepped into his office today, dressed in rifles and ready for war. Nick thought he’d always find her beautiful, no matter how much he hated her for it right now.

Part of him never wanted to see her again. Part of him hoped he never would.

Part of him imagined her lying by the waterfront with a slug between her shoulders and Eddie Winter standing above her smiling and holding the smoking gun. He wondered if she, too, would someday only live on in his dreams, haunting him with blood still fresh on her back and an accusation on her dying lips.

God, he couldn’t go through this again. Not with Nora.

Jenny’s death had nearly killed him. Nora’s would finish the deed.

And there was no longer any mad Doctor Birk to lock him away in a freezer for all eternity, playing Mozart and telling him to practice walking, practice talking, practice sitting, practice writing.

He remembered the room with the painted on window. The one that they’d passed on the way out of the C.I.T. He remembered the torturous hours of being trapped in there, naked in his other body and listless, after yelling at the two way glass had left him feeling beat.

As memories went, it was a short one, just one moment of feeling lost and frustrated in a tiny room with nothing but that damn music and a voice with an accent born somewhere across the sea urging him over a loudspeaker.

_“Try again, Nicholas. Try again.”_

He couldn’t even remember what Doctor Birk had been trying to get him to do, just that it was something inane and rudimentary; a task to be performed over and over again until the Doctor had been satisfied with the results.

What he did remember, was the feeling of isolation. 

The feeling of hopelessness.

The feeling that he’d always be trapped in that tiny room with the faux window painted on the wall for some undisclosed and hellish eternity.

He wondered if he’d known the body he was in at the time wasn’t really his own, or if it even had mattered at the time when weighed against that endless, deep despair.

He wondered if a robot could consider killing itself.

One thing was for certain: He never wanted to hear Mozart play ever again. The nausea that rose in his gut as it played through his memory was overwhelming. 

He looked at the other version of himself up on that wall now and commiserated with what his initial existence must have been like. He wondered now, how he’d survived it all to become the man...synth...people seemed to think so highly of.

He wondered how he, himself, would survive his existence now, if Nora never came back home to him again.

He didn’t think he’d like that. And he hated her right now for leaving him here, in this tiny room, without any windows to speak of at all.

Distantly, he heard a key slide into the knob of the office door, a moment before Ellie burst into the room. She stopped in the doorway when she saw him sitting there, one hand still on the knob and stuck. He turned slowly to face her. She was almost as disheveled as she was.

“Oh,” her voice hitched. “Nick…”

And before he could even think to respond, before he could decide if he even wanted to, she was across the room and leaning over him, her arms wrapped tightly around his shoulders in an embrace. It shook some of the numbness he’d been drifting in away from his body, and immediately, the strong wash of desolation he’d felt when Nora had disappeared behind the door, flooded back in. Her arms held him tightly and, unbidden, his rose to return her embrace. 

That broken thing inside of him woke up again, and suddenly, Nick was holding on to Ellie for dear life. 

She stroked small circles between his shoulders with the palm of one hand and somewhere in his brain, he registered that he was shaking. He held her even tighter, his eyes firmly shut as his forehead pressed against her shoulder.

“Oh, God, Nick,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so, sorry. I...I just heard. The news, it’s all over town.”

“What news..,” he answered automatically, lost for a moment in the comfort of just being held right now, when he was barely hanging onto the world as it was just then.

She pulled back from him a bit, one manicured hand pressing against his cheek like a mother checking a kid’s skin for any sign of fever. 

“The news about Nora, and the Minutemen,” she was looking him up and down now, for any sign he was still some semblance of all right. “Even Travis cut the music to help boost Radio Freedom’s signal. She’s gone to fight Justin Ayo.”

Justin Ayo. He vaguely remembered reading that name in some of the files Doctor Amari had given him to catch up to speed on the Commonwealth’s history. He’d...worked for the Institute, maybe. Some kind of scientist, he thought.

He wondered absently what the man had done that had him firmly on Nora’s radar right now.

“Oh?” His voice sounded hollow, even to his own ears.

Ellie did pull back from him then. She looked worried.

“Didn’t,” she bit her lip and her brows furrowed as she watched him. “Didn’t Nora stop by to see you before she left?”

“She did, yeah,” he nodded, still in a daze.

“And she didn’t say anything about it? Didn’t tell you _who_ she was going to fight?” Ellie’s voice was a pitch higher now. She was getting more upset by the moment.

“We..,” he swallowed, feeling the beginning of what would be thick, hot tears gathering up and threatening to spill along his lashes. “We didn’t exactly…”

Ellie watched in horror as the first big teardrop welled up together and fell, dashing itself with a soft plop on the wood floor. It didn’t take a secretary to realize something had gone horribly wrong with her detectives this morning. Sliding the pink and white striped scarf from around her neck, she dabbed at his cheeks. Ellie knelt down in front of him, one hand to his knee, wondering what was going on in Nick’s poor head just then.

“What happened between you two, Nick?” She asked quietly. “This isn’t like you.”

“How would you know?” He bit back, immediately cringing at the words as he did so. “I...I’m sorry, Ellie. I didn’t mean that.”

“I know you didn’t,” she gave him a bit of a smirk. “You always snarl first and apologize after when things aren’t going your way. You keep to your head too much for your own good and it just comes bursting out.”

He snorted at that and dropped his head, rubbing a hand through his hair to regain some composure. Much as he might want to argue with her, she wasn’t wrong.

“I’m harder to scare off than Nora, believe it or not,” she told him, replacing the scarf around her neck, pleased to see the tears had dried before they’d been able to get started. “And she’s hard to scare. So talk to me, what happened this morning?”

“She left,” he admitted, swallowing hard against the lump in his throat. “She left me.”

“I very much doubt that,” Ellie shook her head. “You two are pretty well tied at the hip.”

“Then why’d she leave me here?!” He felt some of the anger from earlier coming back and he latched onto it, if only to drag himself away from despair. “She wouldn’t let me go with her. Wouldn’t even hear of it!”

Ellie’s features softened and she gave his knee a reassuring squeeze.

“Don’t blame her for that, Nick, please. I can understand why she wouldn’t want you anywhere near that man she’s going after today.”

“Well, I can’t,” he sighed. “And I wish someone would just explain it so I could.”

“What happened this morning, Nick?” She murmured her favorite question again. 

It made his blood boil.

“We _fought_ , Ellie! I _yelled_ at her for wanting to go and she..,” the fight went out of him as quickly as it’d come. “She just stood there and _took_ it. All of it. _Christ_ , the things I said to her…”

And there it was. _Guilt._ His old familiar friend, even back before the bombs. The guilt was eating away at him now.

“And then?” Ellied pressed him.

“And then she left,” he looked at her now, fully beaten and broken to bits. “She left thinking that I hated her. That I didn’t lo—”

He bit back the words and turned away.

“Oh, Nick,” Ellie sighed. Metal or muscle, Nick Valentine’s heart always seemed to be pinned tightly to his sleeve. “Nora _knows_ how you feel about her, I can promise you that much. You’ve been head over heels for that dame ever since she walked through the door.”

He looked and her, cocking an eyebrow at her terrible impression of him. He didn’t really talk like that did he?

“Just repeating what you told me, once,” she held up her hands in mock defence. “So, how much do you know?”

Nick snorted softly, shaking his head.

“You mean, in general?” he looked at her in defeat. “Or that I’m not the only Valentine in the office?”

She looked at him suspiciously.

“Did Nora tell you that?”

“No, Harry did,” he gestured weakly.

“Oh, him and that big mouth of his,” she rolled her eyes. Ellie stood up then and offered Nick a hand. “Come on, let’s go upstairs and make some coffee. Then you and I are gonna have us a talk.”

Nick stared at that offered hand for a long moment, before taking it and allowing Ellie to pull him to his feet. She clucked her tongue at the state of his rumpled hair and attire, leading him down the back hallway and giving him a little push into the bathroom instead.

“No wonder she left you behind. I’d have done the same,” she scolded, gathering a small pile of clothing for him from a suitcase he hadn’t seen under the bed. “You can’t go around with a girl like Nora looking like you just woke up in a brahmin’s pen. Now get in there and get cleaned up while I make the coffee. You know you’ll feel like a million caps when you’re done.”

She pushed the clothes into his hands and left him standing there as she tromped up the stairs muttering to herself.

“Honestly, Nick, I taught you better than that.”

Something about Ellie and her attitude towards him in that moment threw him for a loop and he chuckled despite himself. She was probably 12 years his junior...well, more like 212 years if he were honest, and she acted like he was still a boy getting into mud puddles. With a sigh of resignation, he closed the bathroom door, and did as he was told.

She wasn’t wrong about the shower, though. The hot water eased the tension he’d been carrying all morning and while he hesitated at first to use the soap, once he’d found the courage to build up a lather, the knot that had been in his chest since Nora left came undone. The steam building up in that small room was full up with that sweet aroma, and he breathed deep while he finished rinsing off, the ghost of her scent embracing him as she had before she left.

Nick considered forgoing a shave when he was done, but decided against it, in case Ellie got on him again about it. He pulled on the familiar, but still foreign looking clothing; the same sort of trousers, shirt and tie he’d made his daily uniform for years, struggling a bit in his attempt to get himself sorted in the small room. He looked the same as he ever did when all was said, and done, but as he stood before the mirror, in the well worn, nearly threadbare Commonwealth clothes she’d given him, Nick thought he almost looked like he _belonged_ there.

He tossed his own clothes onto the bed in a pile before heading upstairs, chasing the scent of coffee and something delicious cooking. His stomach growled. He hadn’t eaten since lunch yesterday.

“Now you look like the guy I used to know,” Ellie said, nodding in approval when he crested the top stair and she got a good look at him. “Hungry?”

“Starving,” he agreed, taking a seat at the small table under the stained glass lamp in the corner. “Didn’t really get around to breakfast this morning…just coffee and a cigarette.”

“Jesus,” Ellie rolled her eyes, setting a heaping plate of meat and vegetables before him. “You’re the same as Nora. You Valentines are gonna be the death of me.”

“Might only have to worry about the one from now on,” he swallowed, suddenly not as hungry as he’d been a moment ago. “I really screwed up this morning, Ellie.”

“So? Let’s fix it,” she brought two steaming cups of coffee with her to the table and joined him. “Starting with whatever this thing is between you and Nora. You two had plans, so why’d you run off yesterday?”

“For a lotta reasons,” Nick mumbled, spearing a tato and pushing it around his plate.

“Such as?” She stirred a packet of sugar into her coffee.

“She wanted to talk,” Nick shrugged.

“And?” Ellie pointed at him sharply with her spoon.

“And I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear what she’d have to say,” he reached for his own cup, irritated.

“Because you were afraid she wouldn’t love you anymore?” Ellie cut right to it, startling Nick.

Well, she certainly wasn’t one to mince words. He looked away, clearing his throat and suddenly feeling like he was back in the hot seat again.

“Something like that,” he mumbled.

“But, you still love her,” she said it as a fact, not a question.

“More than I should,” he admitted quietly.

Ellie sighed softly and leaned back in her chair.

“So, what’s really the problem here, Nick?”

“I just…” he grimaced and forced the words to his tongue. “Why didn’t she tell me she was married to _him_.”

“Who?” Ellie’s head tilted, looking confused. “Nate?”

“No, no. To Nick,” he felt stupid even as he said it. “The _other_ Nick.”

Whatever Ellie was thinking about, she was taking her damn sweet time saying it. For a moment, he would have sworn she was ready to lay into him, but she didn’t. Instead, she shook her head and frowned.

“She’s married to _you_ , Nick,” she said. “ You’re one in the _same_.”

“No. Much as I wish it were otherwise, I’m not,” he was the one shaking his head now. “I can’t _remember_ being that guy, Ellie. I’m _different_ from that guy now. With a lot less in my head than there should be.”

Ellie snorted.

“You know what I think? I think you’re full of it, Nick,” she told him, in no uncertain terms and with a dash of amusement across her features. “You’re _exactly_ the same guy that you used to be, just...with a few different features.”

Nick offered a timid smile up that reeked of that damned and overgrown sense of humility he’d been born with.

“Well, I appreciate you saying so, but it doesn’t change the facts,” he sighed, still yearning for all he lacked. “I can’t even remember asking her to _be_ my wife.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that she _is_ your wife,” Ellie argued, gesturing with her coffee cup to accentuate her point. “Listen to me, Nick. _Really_ listen. Whatever differences you keep seeing, they’re not so big in the scheme of things. The guy you are now? That guy? You were that same guy previously, too.”

She smiled ruefully at him, shaking her head.

“It’s how I _know_ you’re still trying to talk yourself out of the good thing you and Nora got going on. You _always_ overthink things. It’s what makes you so good at your job...you consider all the details as important stuff.”

Nick couldn’t argue with that. It felt strange being disassembled so easily by a woman who was technically still a stranger to him, though.

“But you’ve gotta remember the big picture here,” she continued. “The big stuff? The stuff about you that she fell in love with? That stuff didn’t come out of your life in the Commonwealth and I can say that, because I’ve seen both versions and I _know_ where they match up.”

Nick frowned. He’d never considered that line of argument before. He’d never met the other Nick. He had no point of comparison.

“And before you start overthinking any of that,” Ellie reached across the table, taking hold of his hand with a knowing look. “I’m just sayin’. You’re still you and the stuff that really matters hasn’t changed at all.” 

Nick just looked at her a moment, before a wry laugh escaped him.

“What’s so funny?” Ellie huffed.

“Nothin’, just,” Nick shook his head, a bit more of a smile gracing his lips then. “Harry might have said something along the same lines last night.”

“Then what does the evidence tell you,” Ellie grinned at him like a Cheshire cat. “We always go back to the evidence right?”

Nick’s eyes narrowed, his mind putting it all together as she watched him.

“That _other_ Nick you’re getting all worked up about?” Ellie supplied slowly for him. “He was still you. You just don’t want to believe it, because he had something you want and you won’t let yourself accept that it’s already yours.” 

Nick’s eyes fell to his coffee cup. He took his thoughts back from yesterday. He didn’t like Ellie. She was way too observant for a secretary. She should have been a detective.

“While that may be true,” he admitted, stressing the syllables as if he still doubted her. “Doesn’t stop me from feeling like I’m living another man’s life. Like I’m living in another man’s shoes.”

She nearly choked on her coffee and sputtered.

“Now, why are _you_ laughing?” He leaned back in his chair. Dammit, he was being honest here. Crazy dame.

Ellie waved him off as she recomposed herself, setting down her mug so as not to accidentally drown in its contents, if the rest of the conversation were going to continue this way.

“Sorry, it’s just that,” she smiled at him. “He used to say the _exact_ same thing about _you_.”

Nick’s eyes went wide in surprise. Of all the things she could have said, he really hadn’t expected that. Ellie noticed and took pity on him.

“Something went screwy when he woke up in the Commonwealth after the Institute threw him out,” she explained. “Didn’t know he was a guy’s mind trapped in a synth’s body at the time. He _really_ thought he was just programmed with a handful of memories and a personality borrowed from some pre-war detective.”

She grew suddenly wistful, remembering Nick as he was, and all the heartache he’d lived through since she’d known him.

“Really messed with him, you know,” she said softly. “He lived his life feeling like a fraud, like... he’d just been _borrowing_ a life. That Nick just wanted something he could call his own.”

Like a detective agency with his name on the door in Diamond City. Like a little apartment down by the waterfront with a big bay window. Like Nora.

Nick swallowed. That was _too_ familiar.

“I don’t know how exactly you think you two are so different, but he had gaps in his memory, too,” Ellie informed him quietly. “Neither one of you were really playing with a full deck of cards here.”

“Maybe so,” Nick was pensive now. “But his hand is still the one holding Nora’s.”

Ellie squeezed his fingers with her own.

“So, deal yourself in,” she told him. “The game’s not over yet. Make a play. Memories or not, you already know you’ve got the winning set of aces.”

“Oh, yeah?” Nick shook his head with a smirk. “How do you figure?”

Ellie shrugged and gestured with one hand.

“If you never get the memories back, so what? You two start making new ones. You don’t need to remember all the hell you two walked through to know that it happened.” 

Nick thought on that a long moment.

“And if the memories do come back?”

Ellie shrugged again, gesturing now with her other hand.”

“Then you’ll be the _only_ Nick Valentine that’s ever had the good fortune of knowing everything about himself there ever was to know.” 

They stared at each other a long moment over the remains of Nick’s brunch and their empty coffee cups.

“You’d make one hell of a detective, you know that,” he wondered at her from across the table. “Remind me to give you a raise, when I figure out how to do that.”

“Already done, boss,” she winked at him. “So what else is eating at you?”

Nick sat thoughtfully, putting his thoughts together. Ellie let him have a moment to himself and refreshed their coffees, setting his plate in the sink for washing later.

“Why was she so afraid to take me with her today,” he posed the question as a statement, the detective in him fully awake again. “It wasn’t because of how I am now. No. She said she wouldn’t have let the synth version of me go either.”

“She was trying to protect you, Nick,” Ellie said quietly.

“But from _what?_ ” He frowned at her. “An army at her back and she’s still afraid to let me near this guy. Who is this Ayo character, anyway?”

Ellie was the one who now sat silently for a moment. Nick could see her trying to find the words.

“You know Eddie Winter?” She finally asked.

“How could I ever forget,” he scowled. What was she on about?

“He killed your fiance,” She looked up at Nick, and there was something in her eyes there. Something sad. “And the reason he killed her was on account of you being a threat to him, right?”

“That, and because he was a murdering coward,” Nick muttered, the thought of Jenny on the ground immediately bothering him.

Ellie snorted.

“What’s your point?” Nick watched her carefully now.

“If you..,” she started. “If you knew ahead of time that he could hurt her... that he wanted to kill her...what would you have done?”

Nick’s breath came out in a ragged sigh and he met her eyes in a knowing gaze. They weren’t talking about Eddie Winter here. Ellie was putting things into context for him, in a way only he could understand.

“Justin Ayo is her Eddie Winter,” Nick stated quietly. “He’s some thug that still haunts her…”

_“The way through’s been clear for years now, only some asshole decided he’d try to step in and take you two out.”_

John’s words from the first night Nick had met him, standing in Nora’s room in HQ, echoed through his skull just then. He knew now from all the talks the two had shared that one of the first routes the Minutemen had helped secure were all of them that led from Diamond City to Goodneighbor on account of new trade agreements and alliances.

It was a guarded route. Not something a knifeman could just wander into on accident. You’d have to plan it.

“It wasn’t a random attack,” Nick murmured. “When that...when that Courser took me out of commission...that wasn’t by chance at all.”

Nick’s mind was quickly starting to connect the dots. 

Between Desdemona and Deacon he’d learned about the Coursers. He knew most of them had been wiped out when the Institute fell, and the Minutemen had been hunting down the remaining Institute-loyal synths that were still above ground, culling the numbers over the last few years as they came upon them. There hadn’t been an attack on people by a Courser in years. He could remember that because of the way Desdemona had said it at the time. There was real pride in her words. And relief.

But there were still organized synth attacks every now and then on the settlements. Nothing serious, but calculated. MacCready had been talking with him about that as he’d cleaned his rifle. He’d said it at the time, because he didn’t want Nick to worry; because Nick had still been new to the world then and had asked about all the other monsters he might have to face.

An organized attack meant there was someone leading them. Someone calling the shots. Someone testing defenses and looking for loopholes. Someone like Eddie Winter.

Someone like Justin Ayo.

So he’d had his robot soldiers poking at the Minutemen. Why? A distraction, maybe. Distract the army with an attack on one settlement with his pawns, and something else might get left unguarded. Do that enough times and he’d be able to place his important pieces where they wouldn’t be noticed. Sneak one guy in; right place, right time, and he might even catch a couple off guard as they walked down a safe street together.

But why that couple when there was a whole contingent of Minutemen to take aim at. Something about them made them special; made them dangerous. They had to be taken out first; pull the lynchpin holding the grenade together and it went off. Nora was the Lady of the Commonwealth now and Nick had always had her back. It’d be a blow to the people if they were taken out, would kill their morale. But, how would you know where to find them? You’d have to be watching, waiting, holding off for the right moment. Obsessing over them for years.

No, that kind of obsession made this _personal_. Ayo wanted them dead and he went to a lot of trouble to make sure it happened. Even sent a Courser in, one that Deacon said Nora had _known_. A familiar face with a gun. Not some random bot.  
That made it personal. This was personal. Personal like Nick Valentine and Eddie Winters.

So was it revenge for the destruction of the Institute or a grudge held for a personal slight?

And why attack in high numbers now and in such a blatant way? Bit showy and too risky for an easy win. Ayo had to know the Minutemen would come in droves to stop him. It’d be easier to use that army to take the settlements out one by one, swarm them like unexpected locusts and move on before they could regroup. No, the devil was in the details here, specifically in the production of it.

Ellie gave him the context. Now use it.

Winter could have killed Jenny anywhere, taken her body and dumped it in that oubliette he’d placed so many others he’d wanted gone. But he hadn’t, he’d left Jenny out on that street, her wallet and jewelry untouched, the diamond ring still on her finger. He’d wanted Nick to know it was him. It’d been a challenge more than a warning. Winter wanted to gloat.

So this show of force was some sort of spectacle created to challenge the players the Ayo hated most. No. No...not players. Not plural like Valentines. Just one; the one that survived. If he thought he’d killed one of them, then he’d have something to gloat about and hold over the other. He’d have the survivor off guard when he did it, due to grief, just as Eddie Winter had Nick off his balance when Jenny had died.

So Ayo thought he’d killed one of them. He was sure enough of it to risk his army, which meant he had some way of seeing that scene in the street. If so, Nora was the more likely survivor. Nick had been nearly torn in half and she was still on her feet from the chems.

So Ayo was challenging Nora.

And Nora didn’t want Nick with her.

But why? They’d fought together before. Ayo hadn’t really killed him. They could have fought this one together. No. There was something else there now.

_“I’d rather risk you hating me than risk losing you again.”_

Nora had said those words to him just that morning. She’d been shaking. Desperate. The girl who’d sat with him on those steps, holding his hand like the world began and ended between them. She didn’t really want Nick to hate her; her actions towards him were filled with affection. Maybe even lo...oh...hold off on that right now, one problem at a time. 

Stick to Nora.

She’d put Nick’s life above her own already, with that message on her arm and a body full of enough chems to kill herself, just to get him to safety. They went everywhere together, they were close. But she also couldn’t risk Nick going with her this time. Why? Because of who she was fighting. This, Justin Ayo, fella.

Put it together, Valentine. You’re the detective here.

Think. 

She’d been afraid.

His angel that always seemed to have starlight in her eyes. They were dark this morning; more than worried. She was terrified of something. Not of fighting Ayo. No. She was going to do that no matter what, even if it meant that Nick would hate her, she would leave him behind so he’d be sa—

_Save Nick._

She’d written that on her arm.

She was still writing that on her arm, he’d just been too stupid to see it.

She hadn’t left him.

She was still trying to save him.

Save Nick. Because she couldn’t let Ayo know he was still alive. Because he’d already done something before that made him dangerous to Nick. Something that had frightened Nora where she wanted Nick safe under lock and key away from the man.

Nick looked sharply up at Ellie.

“This Justin Ayo, character,” his eyes narrowed in shrewd thought. “He ever threaten me before? To Nora?”

Ellie sat silently for a moment. Nick didn’t like that. He could see the tremor in her fingers now as she hesitated.

“Ellie,” Nick tried again, more softly this time.

“He..,” she turned away, looking at the coffee pot for a moment, seeking distraction. “He did more than threaten you.”

“Figured he was behind the attack,” Nick took hold of her shaking hand, rubbing it in reassurance. “But as you say, I’m right here, Doll. No harm, no foul.”

Ellie was the one who looked close to tears now. She opened her palm and held Nick’s hand in her own.

“No, I don’t mean that,” she admitted quietly. “He did more than that.”

“Tell me about it, El,” he pushed. “I need to know.”

“He didn’t just threaten her with you,” she sighed. “He...he gave her a demonstration.”

Nick’s mind was racing. None of the things coming to mind right now were good.

“What sort of demonstration?” He couldn’t stop from asking.

Ellie swallowed hard. She was upset now, no question about it. She stood, pulling Nick with her, before walking them both downstairs to the main office. She dropped his hand when they reached his desk, continuing forward to the filing cabinets.

Nick heard her sniff and clear her throat as she opened a drawer.

“There are some memories I’m glad you don’t have,” she smiled at him, her eyes watery, but not crying. “God knows I wish I had that option.”

“Nora used to run between us and the Institute, back when she was a double agent for the Railroad,” she explained. “It got to be where it was easier for her to teleport here, to Diamond City, as a relay point. Lot more people around. A lot less chance of the Institute following her and discovering HQ.” 

Nick sat on the edge of his desk while he listened, taking in everything she told him like a second skin.

“Honestly though, she came here to talk with you. She’d just...show up...and you could _tell_ ,” Ellie shook her head.

“Tell what?” Nick asked.

“That she had a head full of new horror stories she needed to get out. She sat right there,” Ellie pointed beside Nick’s desk. “And you’d hold her hand, and I’d take dictation. She’d say it all in this voice...it was so calm and even. It was eerie. No emotion, like she was reading you a grocery list, you know?”

“Go on,” he urged her.

“The things she saw down there, the stuff they did and that they showed her,” Ellie shivered. “It was cruel, Nick. And sick. They’d take people and torture them. Just...open them up, like they were meat. That was what Justin Ayo did. Said it was for science. Interrogation techniques and seeing what a body could live through. That sort of thing.”

Her voice dropped at that last bit.

“He never took a liking to Nora. I don’t think he ever trusted her like some of the others did,” Ellie said, disgust rising in her voice. “And when he figured out it bothered her, he made it a point to show her his latest experiments and assign her these awful tasks as often as he could. I don’t know how she survived it. The Institute was an awful place and Father was her own flesh and blood, but I don’t think anything there scared her as much as Ayo did. She always had this fear the next person on his table would be someone she knew. That it’d be one of us.”

Knowing Nora as he did, Nick could imagine how horrible that fear must have been for her. Jesus, they’d told him her stories at HQ, but not like this. Not like _these_.

“When she’d leave, we had this complicated system worked out with her partner there, Deacon. Someone would come and pick up the notes,” Ellie paused. “But I took copies.”

Nick frowned at the filing cabinet drawer. He made a decision.

“They somewhere I can read?”

Ellie gestured at the drawer. Upon closer inspection, Nick realized it was full of hardcover notebooks. There wasn’t any room left in the drawer.

“Take your pick.”

Nick felt as if the air had just been kicked out of him. He swayed and sat on the floor. Ellie soon joined him, seating herself at his back, the pair holding steady against one another. Nick wasn’t sure he wanted to read any of it any more, but there was a thought there that just wouldn’t leave him alone.

“You said Ayo didn’t just threaten her with me,” his voice sounded dull and monotone. “You said he gave her a demonstration.”

“With one of the Gen 2’s,” he felt her small nod. “He dismantled it, piece by piece as he talked at her about you. Ripped the damn thing to shreds...they all have your _face_ on ‘em, you know.”

Nick hadn’t known.

“When he was done, he gave her two pieces of it,” Ellie was choking out the words now. “Cut ‘em right out of the thing’s skin. A white piece, from the outside and a black piece, dyed from all the coolant, from the inside. Even cut ‘em into little hearts for her. So she could give one to her _Valentine_.”

Nick stared at the floor in front of himself. Horrified.

“Never understood why you put ‘em on the key chains,” Ellie laughed through a sob. “It was all said and done by then, the Institute was gone and Ayo was on the run. But you did it anyway. Said it was important that you remember everything you two had survived together.”

It was a long while before she spoke again.

“Sometimes...sometimes she’d spend the night here and you’d just sit there with her, while she slept. Sometimes, she couldn’t stay and you’d walk with her to the gate. You always told her you’d be there waiting for her, and that you’d see her later. Like you were certain she’d make it back again, like she was still normal,” Ellie said wistfully. “You gave her something to keep living for, I think. A reminder that no matter what happened to her out there, she wasn’t alone. There was still someone waiting for her to come back here. To come back home.” 

Ellie’s words cut Nick straight through the ribs. He felt nauseous.

“He...I walked with her every time she left the city, didn’t I,” he said quietly. “I saw her to the gate every time and watched her go.”

“Don’t think for a moment it was easy on you,” Ellie said from over his shoulder. “I was still here in the office when you’d get back. _I_ remember what a mess you were every time she stepped outside these walls.”

Ellie patted his hand as it sat next to hers.

“But you did it every time, anyway,” she reassured him. “You may not have liked it, but you understood why she had to do it. It’s why you two make such a good team. Never knew such a pair of people that could care to a fault, I swear.”

Nick closed his eyes, covering them with his hand. He wanted to drown in that darkness just then. He’d been such a fool.

They sat like that for a long while, Ellie and Nick, on the floor of their little detective agency; together.

“I really hope she makes it back this time,” Ellie whispered finally, sorrow filling her voice, as her head dropped back against Nick’s shoulder. “ I really do.”

“She’ll make it back,” he said quietly. “She’ll make it back.”

“How can you be so sure?” Ellie hiccuped, wiping away her tears.

“Because she knows I’m still here,” he murmured. “Waiting for her to come home.”


	19. The House With White Wings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sure that I'll get another update in today, but we'll see!

It was nightfall before they left the office. 

He walked Ellie home, arm in arm, both of them quiet. Both of them clinging to the other for support. Nick left her in Travis’s capable care, declining their kind offers for him to spend the night so he wouldn’t have to be alone. Ellie was upset with him, but he promised he’d be fine, that he was tired, and just wanted to go _home_.

She’d looked at him oddly a moment, before a broad smile picked up the corners of her lips, and she’d leaned out of her door to kiss his cheek. Nick stood there long enough to watch them close the door and then he headed back the way he’d came, cutting down Third Street and wishing the office a good night, before passing by the neon signs and stepping out into the market.

The knowledge that the Minutemen were somewhere out there fighting kept most people indoors for the night, kept people scared and eager for morning to come with any news from the battlefront. The few that Nick passed by did a double take, some whispering some quiet words of support, others, unable to look him in the eye.

Nick wondered if it was always like this when Nora went off to war. If the people of Diamond City took extra care with him, watching him as he waited for her return. He wondered how they’d treat him if she never came home. He knew he never wanted to find out.

The shops and storefronts fell behind him as Nick made his way to the dark end of the street, though it wasn’t dark right now. There, above the red door, a light was on.

For the briefest of moments, Nick felt his heart jump. For the briefest of moments, he made the mistake of thinking she was already back in the City and safe. He knew she was still out there somewhere, so why leave a light on above the door?

He thought she might have forgotten to put it out before she left. 

He hoped she’d left it on for him.

The odd little chalk drawing by the door frame made more sense to him now and he looked down upon it as he moved closer with something like pride. He’d seen the white wings on Nora’s back that morning, just a glimpse before she was gone out the office door. The one here reminded him of the lantern drawn in the Old North Church. A symbol of the Railroad that seemed to say: You’re safe here. 

As Nick stood before the red door, however, he thought the chalk drawing on Home Plate to be more accurate than the lantern had been. This was Nora’s symbol, on Nora’s house, and it told everyone who might see it the truth.

An angel lived there.

At the end of the dark street, in the house with the red door and white wings.

Just last night, Nick had dreamed of living in that house with white wings.

He hoped right now, that he did.

Reaching into his pocket, he slowly pulled out his keys. One silver, one gold; held together by a black synthskin keychain a monster had told Nora was a gift for her Valentine. Nick looked at the keys now, shifting the gold office key out of the way, and lifting the silver one to the light. He’d come to Diamond City in the hopes of finding a new life. He hoped right now he was about to find another piece of his old one, instead. 

And if Nora would still have him, perhaps they could bridge the two.

Raising the key to his lips, he kissed it once for good luck. If he played this hand now, there was no going back, no denying anything anymore. He’d be leaving his heart in that house made in silver, one way or another. 

Nick took the gamble. 

He fit the silver key into the silver lock and turned it. 

The latch clicked once and opened.

Nick stood in the entryway, releasing the breath he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding, as the red door swung lazily into the dark shadows of the house.

It opened.

It opened.

_It opened._

Still standing in the street, Nick raised a hand trembling with both excitement and fear into the void before him, searching the walls near the interior door frame until his fingers caught hold of a switch. He flicked it up.

The soft hum a generator starting filled his ears, and one by one gentle white lights began kicking on throughout the house, eating away at the darkness that had just been there until none of it was left. Strings of colored faerie lights flickered and lit along the edge of the ceiling and a small lantern threw shadows and cutout lights shaped like stars on one wall.

It was beautiful.

Glancing one more time over his shoulder, Nick said goodbye to outside street and took his brave first step into Home Plate, shutting the door behind him.

The house was quiet, like churches used to be quiet, back in the day. The kind of quiet that made you feel calm and reverent and gave hope that all your sins could be forgiven in that sacred house someday. Nick timidly looked around and fell in love.

There were bookshelves everywhere. Small ones and bigger ones, each stuffed full of hardbound texts and softcover editions and even a small collection of comic books. They stacked atop cases where they didn’t fit and leaned up against chairs where they’d been left to pick up again later. Where there weren’t books, there were plants. Pots upon pots of purple hubflowers and yellow carrot blooms and some sort of lily that came in pinks and oranges and blues. They made the room smell sweet, like Nora’s soap smelled sweet and it mixed with the lingering scent of tobacco still present in the air.

Above them, along the walls, old posters advertised Nuka-Cola and Snack Cakes and Red Rocket service lists. Signs were posted that said “Electric” and “Plumbing” where there was none, and above an overstuffed and inviting red couch, a neon heart not unlike the one on their office sign flickered bright pink. 

Big colorful rugs were strewn across the scratched polished wood floors and a collection of blue carnival glass tumblers stood beside a matching pitcher on a shelf, just to the side of a long, old record player console. A cardboard box sat beside it on the floor, stuffed with a collection of music. Several small photo frames littered the table of the player; of family, of friends, of a beat up old polaroid where a man he thought might be Nate stood against a blue sky, holding his son, and of Nick and Nora, when Nick had been the Great Synth Detective and she had been his wife. That last picture caught Nick’s eye and he gingerly lifted it to get a better look. 

There, on Nick’s good synth hand in the photo, was the missing silver ring. The one that Nora now wore from a leather strap around her neck until the time he took it up again.

Nick stared down at that photo, and wondered where they’d found the rings. Harry had said they were uncommon in the Commonwealth. He wish he knew the story that went with them.

He wondered if the ring would still fit.

Looking around the large living room, Nick felt like he’d been here once before. Not him as the synth Nick, but Nick as he was now. It was the kind of room that looked like a good place to spend an evening. The kind of room he’d always loved. But there was something... _dreamlike_ about it now and as he walked farther to the right of the front door, he understood why. 

There, tucked into a little nook in the wall, just big enough for a pair of seats, was a red chair with a soft, white reading lamp behind it. A book was laying over one arm and Nick could imagine Nora sitting there, glass of whiskey and a cigarette in hand.

He’d dreamed of that chair back in HQ, when the woman in the cream colored dress from his old bay window had changed scenery for the evening, and sat in that red chair instead. He wondered now how much of it had been a dream, and how much of it was this real memory.

Newly invigorated, Nick continued around the corner to the left of the front door, moving on to explore the house. There was a well stocked kitchen with more coffee and a well maintained pot, a cupboard full of more blue carnival glass and mugs, and a cabinet full of whiskey and bourbon and some sort of french wine, all stamped with the wax seal with a “C”. 

Near the back door he found the bathroom, a much bigger affair than what he’d been using at the office; this one having a shower and a bath to its name. The air still held the scent of her soap here and Nick breathed in one calm breath to tide him over for now.

There was a sitting area for breakfast and workbenches, complete with tool chest for guns and some sort of locker for what looked like weaponry in one hallway. There was even a jerry rigged old radiator that looked like it might run on steam, for when it got cold.

Nick turned the corner back towards the red chair room, when he ran into a set of wooden stairs leading up that he hadn’t notice before. His excitement grew quiet when he saw the shirt neatly folded on one step, and he reached down to retrieve it with care.

He didn’t have to unfold the soft material of the button down to know it’d been one of his. He’d seen her wearing it while she stargazed the night last, and he wondered if she’d always worn his shirts to bed. There was something about the idea of her in his clothing that sent his heart reeling again and he carried the shirt upstairs with him as he went.

Nick felt strangely awkward as he entered the loft bedroom, placing his shirt on one of the dressers and looking at the double sized bed. The covers had been hastily thrown back over the sheets of the mattress, in the same manner he used to make his bed back in the day. The sheets were a silvery grey in the light up here, hidden mostly by a large black comforter with the Silver Shroud logo printed loudly in the middle of it. Nick wondered where she’d found the gaudy thing. He wondered if it had something to do with her hat back at the office.

There was a lump in the bed, now that he looked at it. Drawing the sheets back in one hand, his expression immediately softened. There was only one pillow at the head of the bed. The other had been lying under the blankets, filling up the space where another person might have taken up residence in. He wondered if she had trouble sleeping at night, as he did. He wondered if he’d had that side of the bed by the wall and how they slept when they were together.

Nick tucked the sheets back over the pillow, feeling suddenly like an intruder again. This house was the sum of their parts. A collection of tangible things that said they’d lived there together once. None of them were really _his_ per se, but they were most certainly hers and he felt like some snooping shamus going through her life like this without her permission.

Didn’t matter that he had a key.

It was still his first time here, much as it had been his home. And Nora...Nora still lived here. He could see her in every nook and detail. From the copious amount of plants, to the plush monkey in an astronaut suit hanging out downstairs, to the empty glass tumbler on her nightstand.

Oh.

His life hadn’t been the only one turned upside down in the incident.

Maybe…

Maybe he wouldn’t spend the night here afterall. Or maybe he could sleep on the couch for a while. Or maybe he was having second thoughts in the face of so much evidence a man, so much like himself, had once been living in this dream he wanted. For as much as he could see Nora in this house, there were bits and pieces of himself scattered around, too.

Conflicted, Nick passed by the nightstand with the oversized alarm clock, which on second glance he realized was one of those old Pip Boys...strange; and continued climbing up the next set of stairs to another small landing full of storage. This one had a ladder, which he took awkwardly to at first. It came out onto the rooftop, out through an old tin trailer outfitted with diner seats and tables. 

For high class eating, he supposed, then winced at his own terrible joke. He thought for some reason, Nora might have laughed and rolled her eyes at him anyway. Nick stepped out of the trailer entry and into the space on the rooftop she’d told him about when they’d first come to Diamond City. He thought it a fitting space for an angel, for this was truly Heaven.

Where she’d found this much astroturf, was anyone’s guess, but the roof was covered in the faded green fake grass. A pair of lawn flamingos stood at the far end, a nice set of outdoor chairs closer to the trailer side with a table between them and more stacked up to one side in case of guests. There was a radio and a small wet bar, cobbled together out of various other pieces of furniture and a deck of cards with pin-up girls painted on them. The cards looked well used. He wondered if they played poker.

He wondered if he ever won.

The fence surrounding everything was just high enough to see out over, but too high to be seen from, unless you walked right up on the railing, and the whole thing was run with strings of lights. It reminded Nick of this fancy Italian spot, Amelia’s or something like that, that he liked to visit in Chicago in the summer. He’d sit on their veranda with a glass of bourbon and a bowl of homemade pasta, taking in the stars between buildings and sitting in the glow of their faerie lights. He liked places like that and this was one of them. Full of lights and color.

Like the roses.

The rest of the space, was full of roses.

Real, honest to goodness, roses. 

Nick wondered where she’d got them all from. From what he’d read in Amari’s files back at HQ, the radiation had ruined everything, had changed everything, and yet, up on the rooftop of Home Plate, in the city center at the end of the world; Nora Valentine was growing roses.

There was something kind of beautiful about that.

The whole space was just big enough to be big enough, and just small enough to feel contained. It was an inviting space. The kind of space that would be nice to spend an evening in, just watching the world go by. 

She hadn’t lied about the lights either. Up here, she had a clear view of the whole City and half of all the sky in the world. The lights of the Great Green Jewel were every bit as wonderful to behold as she’d described them to be and Nick thought he could stay up here forever. 

The stars were out in full tonight, not a single cloud in the sky. Nick walked over to the railing now, standing in the place Nora had stood just the night before, when he’d been watching her from the shadows down on the street.

He wondered what she would have done if he’d called out to her then, as Harry had done when he’d happened by. Nick wondered if she would have let him in. He wondered if he would have stayed the night.

He was pining for her now, he knew. Wishing for that scene in the office today to play out here on the roof, when her arms slid around his chest and she sang him her love song in the syllables of his name.

He wanted her rooftop full of roses and her rooms full of books. He wanted her laughter and her scars and her warm kisses pressed, just so, to his spine. He wanted a new life, mixed so well together with the old, that the edges bled together and how they first met would no longer be as important as where they were now. 

Good God, he was in deep and he’d gladly drown in her if she’d let him.

If she’d let him.

If she came back at all.

Nick stared up at the stars, his grip on the railing so taut that his knuckles ran white, and wondered where she was right now. Wondered, If she was hurt. If she was wounded.

If she was dead.

The ache rushed straight up to his throat at that thought and he held fast to the fence to keep from falling. She had to come back. She had to come back now. He’d solved the case of the silver key and he knew why she wore the ring on the leather strap and if push came to shove, he’d lay all his cards on her table and hope she didn’t mind that he was still a few aces short.

He’d gamble now with heart and hat in hand and risk it all just to see what she’d deal him back.

But she had to come back, first.

She had to come back.

God, please let her come back.

He needed to hear the smoke in her voice one last time. Needed to apologize for dusting on her yesterday and yelling at her in his fear this morning. Needed to know if she could love a broken down man who was still trying to put the pieces back together until they fitted back in with the mechanical heart he’d once had.

“Hey! Mister Valentine!”

Nick startled from his despondent spiral and looked down to see Harry standing there, in the street as he had the night before. The giant guard of a man stripped out of his helmet, blond hair muted to a grey-blue in the evening light. He grinned wide and waved, causing Nick to do the same.

“Hey, Harry,” Nick called down now, as Nora had done then. “How you doin’ tonight?”

“Gettin’ by, gettin’ by,” he nodded, pointing up at Nick. “You okay up there? I heard about the call to arms…’bout Mrs. Valentine leaving today.”

“I’m,” Nick paused, feeling the hitch in his throat. “I’m gettin’ by.”

“We’re all rootin’ for her, y’know that?” Harry said, his ruddy face colored in his earnestness. “And we’re all here for you, too, if ya need anythin’.”

Nick was taken aback by his words.

“I...I really appreciate that, Harry.”

“Just keep thinkin’ positive-like, y’know? She’ll be walking back through that gate any day now, you’ll see, same as always,” Harry grinned.

“Yeah,” Nick said quietly, his smile not quite reaching his eyes. “Same as always.”

“Well, I just wanted to check on ya. I gotta keep makin’ the rounds,” Harry shrugged. “But you take care of yourself there, Nick. The whole city’s with ya tonight. You ain’t alone.”

Nick’s breath caught and came out wrong. Ragged.

He forced a smile.

“I’ll try to remember that,” he nodded. “Goodnight, Harry.”

“‘Night, Mister Valentine.”

Nick watched him put back on his helmet and with a wave he continued on down the street towards the gate. His words, however, stayed behind.

Nick tilted his head back towards the sky and closed his eyes.

A whole city at his back and a whole army behind hers. It was a damn good thing they’d been so invested in saving this world. It’d be a terrible thing to behold if they’d ever wanted to destroy it.

“What is it with Valentines,” he murmured Ellie’s favorite phrase to the wind and shook his head. “Couldn’t have woken up a regular Joe Public, had to be a pillar of the community with an angel for a wife.”

Nick did smile at that. 

He stood there a long while, looking up at the stars and hoping, somewhere out there, she might be staring right back. He’d be here waiting for her now. He’d be here, just waiting.

Waiting for her forever.

It was half past three in the morning when Nick finally decided to turn in. He said goodnight to the stars and walked up to the tin-sided motor home and climbed down the length of the ladder. He passed the bed, leaving his trench coat and hat behind there, before descending the rest of the way to the ground floor. 

Nick double-backed when he passed by the record player, opening the lid and surprised to find a piece of music still inside and waiting. The label print was beyond the point of legibility, but the vinyl itself still looked like it would play. He hesitated only a moment before turning the power dial and placing the needle, eager to hear her last song.

The sweep of violins running up and down their notes filled the room, the kind of intro that gave you time to pull your girl in close as you started her across the dance floor and then that deep, full voice came in and Nick came undone.

He placed his hands into his trouser pockets and closed his eyes, standing there and listening to the familiarity of it all. It’d been playing on the radio as he’d driven to the C.I.T back in the day. He knew because he loved this song. He knew because he’d once had a recording of it that he listened to on lonely Sundays in his big bay window.

“Jackie Wilson fan, eh?” He chuckled, shaking his head and walking away towards the kitchen as the strains of _To Be Loved_ followed him down the hall.

Nick stopped by the counter and filled one of the carnival glass pitchers full of water, before grabbing the half-empty bottle of bourbon near the sink. As he listened to the record play, he fed her flowers the water and himself the bourbon and sat for a while on the overstuffed red couch with a smoke. 

When the record finally ran out of things to say and the bottle of bourbon had been put to rest with the other dead soldiers, Nick turned off the power to the player and removed the needle with care before stumbling up the wooden steps to the bed.

He stared at it a long hard moment, before toeing off his shoes and slipping out of his tie, and setting his belt and holster on the dresser beside Nora’s night shirt. He unlatched his gold watch, placing it beside her Pip Boy alarm clock and pulled the Silver Shroud halfway down the bed.

Nick reset the pillow by the wall to the head of the bed and crawled in on that side. He pulled the covers back up to his chest, reached over the nightstand to flick off the lightswitch and laid back as the white lights went out, one by one, leaving him in the dark of the room and the soft glow of the colorful Christmas lights. His pillow smelled faintly of gun oil and smokes and the mattress felt right under his back. All things considered, it was the most comfortable Nick could remember feeling lying down in this brave new world.

And yet…

Something was still missing.

The bed felt strangely big.

And despite what Harry had said under the starlight, Nick couldn’t help feeling anything but alone right now. 

He hoped Nora wasn’t alone right now.

Turning on his right side, Nick took her pillow from where it lay beside his and held it to his chest. The scent of her soap and his tobacco whispered to him from its fibers and he held it, in the place where she’d lay, hoping that wherever she was right now, she was all right.

Nick lay alone in their bed at Home Plate, and dreamed.

He dreamed of his tiny apartment, near the waterfront, off Monroe and Third. He dreamed of waking to the smell of coffee and the roses from her makeshift garden. He dreamed of her sitting in the big bay window, wearing that cream-colored dress with the faint flower print, and reading.

The blue sky was at her back and the sunlight, so strong, she was in shadows. For a moment, he just watched her, afraid to take the first step forward, so that he could see her face.

“Hey, Valentine,” she sang him her love song as she looked up and a flicker of blue caught his eye. “You all right?”

“Sure, sure. Just lookin’ at you, Doll,” he grinned, a rumble rolling through his voice. “Just looking at you.”

“Bad dream?” She asked.

“Something like that,” he shrugged. “Think I had something of a nightmare. Can’t remember it, really.”

“We’ll figure it out. Come over here and stay with me,” she set the book down and held out a slender, pale hand. On her third finger, a silver ring glowing in the sunlight. “You do an amazing impression of a space heater, and I’m cold.”

“Scandalous,” he shook his head with a chuckle as he made his way across the wood floors to her perch. “Careful now, or people are going to talk.”

“So? Let them talk,” she grinned back, her smile perfect and blinding. She was still reaching out for his hand and waiting.

“I’m only thinking of you here, Doll,” he slid his metal hand against hers, the steel tingling through his sensor net, where the ring had touched it.

“Stop thinking,” she pulled him closer, until he was sitting with her on the window bench. “And give me a reason to stay in for the night.”

Nick grinned.

“Guess I can’t argue with that line of reasoning,” he scooted closer to her.

“I rest my case, your Honor,” she grabbed hold of his tie by the knot and pulled him to her. 

Nick could feel his cooling fans switch to high speed as she pressed her lips to his, fingers brushing against the tattered skin of his jaw and flaring the damaged sensors there. He cupped her cheek, angling her against him to deepen the kiss and swallowing down her every delighted purr. She tasted of coffee and of his clove cigarettes and he brushed his tongue against hers over and over again for want of the flavor. He was hard and panting when they finally broke apart. She laughed that breathy, wisp of pleasure she always did and he fell in love with her all over again. 

“God, I’ve missed you,” he confessed, drawing her closer, until she was resting against his chest.

“If this is going to be how you say good morning every time I go out,” she chuckled. “I should leave town more often.”

“Don’t you dare,” he breathed in the hubflowers and spice of her soap, his good hand tangled in her dark hair. “Stay where I can see you.”

“Well then, if that’s how you really feel,” she sighed contently, playing with the length of his tie with her nimble fingers. “I might just stick around and try my luck. I’ve got a pair of hearts, what do you have?”

“An angel,” he kissed her forehead. “An angel with white wings and a silver house, full of roses.”

“That sounds like some kind of dream,” she said affectionately.

He could feel the coolant pumping erratically now through the tubes in his chest. Something sparked and misfired and left him with a dull ache writhing throughout his sensors.

“It is. You know, sometimes, I think I dreamt you,” he told her, holding her close. “A guy like me and a girl like you...how’d I ever get so lucky?”

“You’re a great detective, Nick,” she cooed. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

“Can’t. Office is closed today,” His good hand traced the edge of her jaw. “Just spell it out for me, Nora.”

“That’s Mrs. Valentine to you,” She tugged on his tie again, with a smile. “And don’t you forget it.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Doll,” he leaned back into her, his own smile pressing near to hers. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”


	20. Standing in Her Sunshine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is one of my favorite chapters.

It was just past one in the afternoon when they made it to the bridge.

Though the recruits were in high spirits, both Preston and Piper shared worried looks where the young Minutemen wouldn’t see them. They passed them back and forth as the kids took position in front of them, in side glances, and from the shadows of Preston’s hat.

Nora hadn’t said _anything_ since they’d left Diamond City.

And now, as they reached the end of their journey, it was too late for either of them to take action now. 

From the start of their trek, Nora had taken up the rear position, and while that in and of itself wasn’t unusual, her pensive mood was worrying and the scrape of her usually light feet against the pavement, a concern. She’d held Piper’s hand when it was offered, but when their hands fell away to take care of a stray feral that had wandered into their path, the connection never picked back up again and the farther they walked, the harder it became to approach her.

Neither Preston nor Piper were sure how to breach the cool wall she’d erected and now, they could only pray that wall wouldn’t crumble when she needed her wits about her the most. They’d make their plan on the other side of the bridge, with an army at their back and more resources to work with. Somehow they’d snap her out of it. They had to.

Preston seemed to think it was just a matter of time. No one could compartmentalize better than Nora, she’d learned it the hard way along her road to the Institute when survival was new and tears wouldn’t fix bullet wounds. She’d get it together and then get them together, and somehow, see them through to victory once more.

Piper knew the truth, however, having spent so much more time with Nora’s more personal side. Her skin was thick and flexible, but there was a hole over her heart that could be pinpointed and the right kind of sniper at just the wrong kind of moment and she’d be bleeding on the ground. It was unfair that for all the burdens she’d carried, for all the hope she’d inspired and the battles she’d won, Nora’s reward at the end had been a happiness broken by the very man whose head they were hunting today.

Piper wanted to grab Nick by his shoulders and shake the crap out of him right now. It wasn’t his fault, not really, she knew. Still, anyone with eyes could see they were just a half-step out of sync since their return to the City, when they usually never missed a beat. It was...painful, to see them so out of step with one another after so long thinking of them as synchronized. Even Piper had to admit, watching them work was a thing of beauty. Yes, Nora worked well with others; a fury given force beside Hancock and a subtle breath of air before it killed you with Deacon, but she and Nick had moved like timepieces, be it with mind or with gun. It was odd now to see her so alone.

One man down and their best girl fading fast. Not a great way to start a battle.

“Hey, there’s nobody here!” The young Minuteman with dark hair, Jacob, called from just in front of them.

“W-we’re not doing this alone are we?” Margot, the dark-skinned beauty of the group cried out.

Piper saw Nora’s head come up at that, her eyes hidden behind the sunglasses, but her head swiveling left and right in search of the army just the same. She tensed. 

Not helping kids.

“They’re waiting for us on the other side of the bridge,” Preston informed them. “You won’t see them till we crest over the ridge.”

He pointed to where the bridge had buckled skyward but hadn’t broken, three quarters of the way across. 

Piper wrote that thought down. If they lived through the day, it’d be a good line for her article. 

“The Lady of the Commonwealth, Wings Bent But Not Broken,” she muttered to herself.

“You say something, babe?” Preston frowned at her.

“Nah, just playing with titles,” she waved him off, still in thought. “I’m worried about Blue. Think she’ll be okay?”

Preston shook his head.

“I sure hope so.”

They climbed the bridge, struggling slightly with the angle of the asphalt as they went. Piper’s legs burned with the effort, but kept moving, desperate to get to the top. If the enforced workout was bothering Nora, she didn’t let on, just kept that slow and steady pace she’d held all morning, now falling behind as the others rushed to the top.

Piper didn’t like that at all. She was used to seeing Blue lead, never follow.

“Oh my gosh!” Ashley yelled, the first to hit the apex of their climb. 

“What is it?” Preston reached for his rifle. “Trouble?”

“No!” She laughed, disappearing over the ridge.

The other kids took off after her, several cheers igniting from them as they leapt over the edge of the concrete blocking the view of the other side.

Preston was the next to the top of the mountain, and whatever Ashley’s “Oh my gosh!” had been, he was tipping his hat back in admiration at now. He turned back with a grin, offering Piper his hand and pulling her up the last few steps so she could take in the view.

Piper just stopped and stared down at the remainder of the bridge.

It was one of those moments every reporter hopes to see in her lifetime.

“Blue, come here!” she called back to Nora. “There’s something you need to see.”

Nora looked up at her, though Piper only saw her own face reflected in the mirrored glass. She offered Nora a hand as Preston had and this time, when Nora took it, Piper was careful not to let go.

Nora’s breath caught as she finally crested the bridge’s rise. There, down below them, stood the Minutemen’s army. 

The people were so thick on the ground, they covered the remainder of the bridge and most of the terrain surrounding it. Tarps and tents and flags were all set up and even from here, they could see the power armor and rifles winking in the afternoon sun. There had to be a thousand people or more gathered. A high number for a land so decimated after the many wars that had befallen it.

“There’s so many,” she said on the back of her breath. “What are they all doing here?”

“They’re here for you, General,” Preston clasped her shoulder, pointing to the blue and white Minutemen flags flying high. They were Nora’s flags; an entire army under a banner of white wings. 

“I’m retired, Preston,” she murmured. 

“Not today, ma’am,” he flashed her a grin.

The trio made their way down the bridge, heading toward the swarm of people that made up the Citizen’s Army. As the large group began to notice the newcomers, conversation dropped out and all eyes turned towards Nora among whispers of her many names in voices held with awe. Nora had never been what people would consider a big woman, even before the bombs dropped. Her mother and father had both been petite people and while Nora considered herself to be a little bit over average height, her pixie-like features and slender bones had always left her looking fragile. Delicate. It was a physical trait that always made people underestimate her, both in the courtroom and on the battlefield.

Right now though, her size was a point of curiosity as people strained to catch a glimpse of her as she moved between Preston and Piper. Some of them seemed to take amusement in her appearance, especially from the outer settlements where the adults told stories of a radiation born goddess, who was ten feet tall with eight arms and four legs, with a stare so cold and blue she could freeze you on the spot just by looking at you. The Lady of the Commonwealth was supposed to be a fearsome thing to behold, but the creature before them, was only a slight woman with dark hair and painted wings upon her back.

As the crowd swallowed them up and the trio swam through the sea of faces, the immensity of their numbers began to sink it.

It was even more overwhelming on the ground level than it had been on the ridge and as they walked through the throng, Nora couldn’t help but be moved. The largest contingent of soldiers was from the Castle, the blue and white flag of the Minutemen proper hanging over them, while solid blue standards with a white tower flew underneath. One flag had always united her army in the beginning, but as time went on and their numbers increased rapidly, the old traditions began to return and delegation pennants began to show up, marking the individual places the soldiers were coming from. She recognized the smaller settlement banners as they passed through the troops, the men and women turning to salute as they went by.

“Jamaica Plains, Kingsport Lighthouse, Murkwater, The Slog, Sunshine Tidings..,” she noted, shaking her head. “God...some of these people must have walked all night to get here.”

“I might have sent out word who were were fighting for,” A rasping voice stuck out in the crowd. “And they jumped at the chance to show up.”

They’d reached the front of the encampment; The General of the Minutemen now standing before them in his faded blue coat. 

“It’s not everyday you get to fight alongside the Lady of the Commonwealth,” he grinned at her, mouth full of rotted teeth on display.

“General Deegan,” Nora smiled, reaching out a hand towards him. It’d been an age since she’d last seen him at the castle, their days at Cabot House come to an end, as the last of the Cabots died out with their magic serum.

“It’ll always be Edward to you, kid,” he took hold of her hand, shaking it warmly. “And you still haven’t been by to share that nightcap with me.”

She grinned. The old flirt.

“I keep telling you, Ed. I’m a married woman now.”

“Can’t blame a ghoul for trying,” he chuckled, his laugh somewhere between a cough and a hiss.

The General’s life seemed to suit Deegan well and that made Nora truly happy. The Cabots were some of the first people she’d met in the Commonwealth and while they were odd, she’d grown accustomed to them. Edward Deegan had saved her life on the road to Diamond City and while she worked under him for the good of the household, he’d paid her back tenfold teaching her everything he knew about combat.

And when he was done, he taught her the most important thing of all.

_“I don’t like killing, unless I have to.”_

His words from that day were still stuck firmly in her mind and though she’d once been scared and had felt helpless in the face of the world she’d woken up to, Nora embraced Edward’s mentality. It was something she’d seen mirrored in Nick when she’d pulled him out of that Vault and part of the reason she’d taken to trusting him so readily. That and the charming way he could turn a phrase.

It wasn’t common knowledge even amongst her closest friends, but before Nora had met Nick, she’d met Edward. He’d been a no nonsense guard dog when she’d first met him, ferociously protective of the immortal family under his care, but time had worn him thin and his dry sense of humor and weary laugh had made him relatable. They’d maintained their friendship through the years, long after Lorenzo Cabot had been killed to save the rest of the family, and she’d seen him through the death of Jack when his time finally came to a natural, though extended, end. 

He’d been listless and alone afterwards in a way that hurt to see. The empty house was too big and too full of memories for him to maintain living there. He’d needed a family. As it was, Nora just happened to be in the market for a replacement, as she’d planned to step down as General, and with his experience and his understanding that murder didn’t always trump mercy, she’d offered him her position. 

It hadn’t been an easy transition at first, he was a stranger to almost all of her friends and a ghoul leading the Minutemen was a new idea, but people trusted Nora and so they trusted Edward and in thanks for his new office when he’d taken up the coat, he’d sent Nora a huge crate of liquor and furnishings from the Cabot’s private stock. She’d need some of that magic serum if she were ever going to live long enough to finish it all.

Looking at him now, he seemed like a new ghoul. There was a light in those milky blue eyes that she’d not seen before and his posture was relaxed instead of constantly on guard.

The General’s life suited him.

“By the way,” Deegan rumbled at her. “Saw that husband of yours recently. He looked different.”

Nora tensed.

“Good different,” he grinned.

“Nick’s been,” she felt her smile waver, but held it as best she could. “Going through some changes recently.”

“Well, if he changes too much, you just let me know,” he winked at her. Nora would have laughed at that, if she hadn’t been so close to tears just then. Not Ed’s fault. He couldn’t have known. “Now come on, some of our allied forces have been waiting to say hello.”

Nora fell into step beside him, to a murmur of awe from the crowd. Just a couple of old Generals keeping pace, nothing so special about that. Piper and Preston had disappeared somewhere behind them, knowing they’d left her in good hands.

“Allied forces?” Nora turned her attention back to Deegan.

“I told you, I put out the call,” he gave that hissing laugh again. “Lotta people answered.”

Outside the boundaries of the Minutemen groups, several more were standing and waiting, some with banners, some without. All with guns and people ready to fight.

“Turns out,” Deegan patted her back. “You have more friends than I know what to do with. Gonna be a hell of a fight on our side.”

Nora just shook her head. She’d lived so many days in this world saving other people, running headlong into trouble when she was needed, answering every call, that she had become accustomed to being the one helping. She wasn’t used to being the one to receive the help and suddenly, she understood why people acted as if she were a big deal. Having someone at your back in your greatest moment of need was a beautiful and inspiring thing. 

And seeing them all here, now, when her world seemed moments away from darkness; chipped off some of the hard shell that had begun to grow around her heart. 

“Mother,” a tall broad shouldered man stepped forward as they approached his group. 

“Z1,” she greeted him warmly, surprise bright on her features, even behind her glasses. His short cropped yellow hair had grown out some, making for a striking contrast to his dark blue eyes. “What are you doing here?”

“I go by Zain now,” he smiled at her, before gesturing to the group behind him, standing beneath the black and white flag with half a human heart and half a gear embroidered into it. She recognized some of them from the Institute fight. They were all free G3’s. “The Commonwealth Synth Contingent is ready to stand by your side again.”

Considering all they’d been through, their numbers were staggering. Close to a hundred, she would guess.

“I didn’t realize the CSC had this many members,” she said in awe, pleased to see them flourishing. “Are you sure you want to do this? You worked so hard to secure your people’s freedom. You don’t have to fight the anymore.”

“We are part of the Commonwealth now and none of us have forgotten the sacrifices you made on our behalf,” he shook his head. “No one else here may understand, as we do, the horrors Doctor Ayo is capable of.”

He paused, and in his eyes, there was a meaningful look.

“ _I_ have not forgotten May 21st.”

The tiniest gasp escaped her lips before she could stop it. She looked at him now. Really looked. She made a decision.

Nora slowly removed her sunglasses, sliding them by the ear piece to hang off her jeans pocket. Two sets of blue eyes, one human, one synth, met in perfect understanding. May 21st. That was the day the ghoul from the Slog had died. When she’d been forced to stand there and nod as Ayo tore what little pieces of him were still whole into jars, berating her for her misplaced sense of empathy for non-humans. When her knees shook in her dirt beaten jeans and she’d sworn for a minute it was John’s heart on that table and John’s eyes in that jar. It hadn’t mattered that it wasn’t John, she’d wept for the ghoul long after his face was recognizable.

Z1 had taken a big risk that day, but he’d followed her to her rooms and held back her hair as she’d vomited in the hours after. When it was done, he’d handed her a holotape full of Institute records the Railroad had been asking for and walked her to the teleportation pad.

It was the most humane thing anyone had ever done for her in that underground hell. Z1 could have been killed for it if Ayo had ever found him out.

She extended her hand.

“It’s an honor to be fighting beside you again, Zain,” her voice came low and full of smoke, but she held his gaze in silent thanks.

“The honor is mine, Mother,” he shook her hand firmly.

“I go by Nora, now,” she winked at him. 

“Of course,” he winked back, the motion only slightly mechanical and overdone. “Nora.”

As they stood there on the same ground together, Nora couldn’t help but think of what a fool Father had been. These were his children, and they were _beautiful_.

“Hey look at you! Always knew you were a social butterfly,” Deacon’s voice pulled her attention to her left and she grinned when she saw that ridiculous pompadour on his head. “Talking all the boys into taking you for ice cream, I bet. Knew there was a reason I named you Charmer.”

Deacon stood under the orange and white colors of the Railroad alongside Glory, Tinker Tom, P.A.M, and both Carrington and Curie. She moved passed Deegan in their direction, giving Zain a quick wave of thanks and goodbye. Deacon met her halfway.

“Nick named me Charmer,” she shook her head at him with a laugh. “If I remember right, you wanted me to go by Angelcake.”

“Don’t knock it, Angelcake is a strong warriors name,” he gave her his best shit-eating-grin. “My mother’s name was Angelcake. Besides, it worked out, everybody just shortens it to Angel with the White Wings now. Much easier to say.”

He leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially.

“But we know the truth, don’t we Angelcake.”

“Liar,” she took his hand affectionately, not as a shake, but in the same way as she’d held Piper’s hand earlier. As friends.

For a moment, they said nothing, lost in the language they’d created for one another. Their friends and other agents always assumed the pair were some kind of telepaths, and there were even rumors they’d gained the ability when a UFO crashed and they’d been struck by some sort of mind ray...rumors that Deacon helped encourage with wild tales of their adventures killing space invaders hiding in caves and stealing their ray guns for the trouble. In truth, the ray gun he’d mounted on his wall at HQ was a cereal box toy, and they had no more telepathy between them than anyone else in the world. The truth was: They talked through the connection of their hands. 

Before Deacon, or BD as he liked to refer to it, Nora had been anything but subtle. Much like the detective she was tied to, Nora was honest to a fault and wore her heart where anyone could hurt it. When they’d first been partnered up, he’d made it his own personal mission to teach her the art of subterfuge, partially because her affinity for getting into trouble often left him the one bleeding as she leapt in headfirst, pistols drawn and ready; and partially because, after awhile, he’d found Nora someone he could strangely relate to, and it gave him a way to speak with her without giving himself fully away.

He knew from watching her exchange words with Nick Valentine how quick and clever her tongue could be. Charmer was a good name for a girl like that, funny as Angelcake would have been. A little finesse of her style paired with the arts of sneaking and slight of hand and he’d molded her into a model partner for himself. The lawyer and the liar. A perfect pairing. The pepper to his salt shaker and all that.

If Nora had ever figured out what he was doing, and Deacon was sure that she did, she didn’t let on. She took his lessons and his advice and stood at his side when he needed her. She was an amusing little thing that held his interest when nothing else did anymore. Like a kid sister you told monster stories to, just to get their reaction. Like his own little sister, the one he’d lost a lifetime ago when a Courser had walked into University Point with a rifle and Deacon had walked out sometime later with the UP Deathclaws.

She was just something he took interest in to pass the time.

But, when the day came when he noticed his lies becoming a little less true and his truths drew forth without the cover of lies while they talked, Deacon came to a realization. For all he’d thought he’d been the one _playing_ her, the one shaping _her_ into something new; in the end, _he_ was the one that’d been played. 

Somehow, the little shit had wormed her way into his cold, dead heart and he began to care for her, with a capital “C”. He’d avoided her for two weeks after that, until she’d cornered him in HQ when she’d shown up unexpectedly, regaling him with a fantastical tale about an albino deathclaw she’d seen in the Boston Commons, that she’d sworn was the irradiated ghost of her brother’s former pet lizard Marie.

The story was so absolutely ridiculous and she’d been so fucking charming, all wide eyed and breathless, he’d forgotten himself and spent the afternoon trading whoppers with her over a pile of Fancy Lad snack cakes.

He’d told her about Barbara after that.

And she’d told him about an older brother that had died. One that, like Deacon, had spent his lifetime telling her stories. The man’s death was never described, nor was his name; Nora wanted Deacon to know about his life. About how his stories had sustained her long after he was gone.

Deacon adopted her after that. Never told her, didn’t have to. It was there every time he’d squeeze her hand in his own, a small sign that he acknowledged her. A small sign that he cared.

And that one small sign led to others. A twitch of the wrist here, a half cocked grin there. They wrote their language like children at play, making new symbols for themselves so that the other would always _know_ what they were thinking.

The first time they’d used their language in combat had been the first time they’d taken out a Courser together. When a dead drop pickup had suddenly become an assassination. She’d moved like the whisper he’d taught her to be and he’d known when to strike by the look on her face alone, and after, when the Courser lay dead at their feet, he gave their little outfit a name as ridiculous as they were.

The Death Bunnies.

They continued to make use of their gestures, both in combat and not, sharing amusement over the frustration it caused for their allies. It made for a silent way to communicate with no codex that could be stolen or given away. It was one of the things that had made them such an effective team.

It also made them a pair to be feared in a hand of poker.

They stood there now, before an army, speaking to each other in silence.

Deacon gave her hand a long squeeze.

_“How you doin’, beautiful?”_

Nora looked left, then pressed the edge of her nail against his skin.

_“Not good. Hurting.”_

Deacon ran his index finger over the top of her first knuckle.

_“I’m here for you, babe.”_

Nora repeated his action.

_“I know.”_

She turned towards him and gave the tiniest shift of her head.

_“Thank you, Deacon.”_

He smirked.

_“Anytime.”_

They could say a thousand things before words ever could form on a tongue and their moment passed unnoticed, mistaken for a friendly gesture of two people holding hands, before Deacon turned to the others behind him.

“Anyway, I heard you were having a party, so, I brought a few extra friends along,” Deacon gestured to the group. “Dez sends her regards. She’s coordinating communications with the radio broadcasts right now. Tom and P.A.M will be working the communication relays and hostile tracking from the back.”

“I didn’t think you did field work anymore, Tom,” Nora smiled at him as he reached out to hand her a small, round device, just bigger than a large pill and painted a metallic blue.

“Uh-uh, Tinker Tom’s got a stake in the fight today. Don’t need no more of those Institute goons getting their claws into our mitochondria, you know what I’m sayin’?” Tom crossed his arms.

“I get the gist of it,” she shook her head. “I think. What’s this?”

“That,” Tom motioned to his ear. A similar device sat sticking out of the cavity. “Is a modern marvel made by yours truly. What you’re holding in your hand is the Tinker Tom Communications Link Array Radio Antenna.”

“CLARA?” Nora quirked an eyebrow.

“You know Tom,” Deacon said, his earpiece catching the light of the afternoon sun. “Tom’s always got a new girl to bring to our shindigs. Life of the party, he is.”

“Now, now, Clara is a clever girl,” Tom agreed. “You give her a tap and she’s good to go. Let’s us communicate out there on the field. Everything relays through P.A.M.”

“You never cease to amaze, Tom,” Nora nodded, tucking the device into her ear. “I’ll take good care of her.”

Deacon squeezed her hand and nodded down the line.

“Glory, of course, is here to teach the front lines what a heavy hitter, care of the Railroad, looks like.”

“Always a pleasure,” the synth woman nodded at Nora. 

“Just make ‘em hurt, Glory,” Nora nodded back.

“Aaand, I know you like to play rough so the good docs agreed to run triage,” Deacon gestured towards the last of their group.

“I can’t thank you enough for doing this,” she addressed them, grateful for their presence. 

Both were ridiculously good and fast at treating rifle wounds and Carrington was especially knowledgeable about juggling multiple patients in a crisis. There were stories from when the Switchboard fell, where he’d treated three people as their friends carried them out of the safe house under fire. When Curie had joined him for a permanent residency at HQ, the pair made for an extremely effective and efficient team. She hoped their services wouldn’t be needed, but Nora was too pragmatic to believe they wouldn’t be pulling out all their medical tricks today.

“It is a pleasure to be working with you again, Madame,” Curie gave a little bow while Carrington nodded. “We ‘ave coordinated with the other doctors and will be well prepared.”

“Good luck out there,” Carrington gave her a knowing look. “And try not to pump yourself full of chems this time.”

Nora had the good grace to look abashed, even as she rolled her eyes. She opened her mouth to throw Carrington a bit of his own medicine, when someone else did it for her.

“Always gotta be the party killer, don’t ya Carrington.”

His voice came over her as it always did, in a way that was so similar and yet still different from Nick’s. Relief flooded through her, the heavy kind of relief that soldiers feel when they finally make it back to base after days under heavy fire.

Nora closed her eyes and smiled, thanking every god in the sky, before turning to see John Hancock and his small crew behind her. On his left, his right hand woman Fahrenheit, looking every bit as hard and battle-ready as she ever was. On his right, stood K.L.E.O, decked out in more guns that Nora had ever seen on one bot in her life. And behind them, twenty members of the Neighborhood Watch, all dressed in their finest with fedoras and tommy guns at the ready.

Hancock stood before them all, in his tricorne hat and red duster, looking for all the world like he owned the place. He smiled at her, and she was already moving.

“John,” she choked on his name, wrapping her arms around him as he opened his own to meet her.

Their friendly embrace shifted to her holding onto him for dear life. 

Hancock returned the gesture, knocking her Minuteman’s hat off her head as they stood there a long moment. His mottled hand tangled into her dark hair and he massaged his ruined fingers gently along the base of her neck.

“I got ya, Sunshine,” he murmured. “Ain’t got nothin’ to worry about with me watchin’ your back.”

Fahreinheit took a sudden interest in talking with the gun ghouls and Deacon pretended he was considering the answers to life somewhere in the clouds above.

If anyone thought it odd that the infamous Mayor of Goodneighbor was holding the Lady of the Commonwealth like his life depended on it, they didn’t say anything. They didn’t dare. Hancock would have murdered them for it.

In another life, in another world, the two might have ended up lovers. But whether it was because Nora was a bit too gentle, or because Hancock was a bit too rough, or some combination of the pair, instead, they’d ended up as close as two people can be, connected by shared experience and a knot so tightly twined together, that not even Nick could have managed to untie them, if he’d ever had the inclination to try.

Something had _happened_ to the pair during their share of time on the road together; a secret that only they knew. Whatever it was that they’d lived through had returned them to Goodneighbor a changed set; the ghost of an experience shared in solemn faces and matching scars and a week where they kept each other close enough that a hand could always be touched for reassurance. It was the reason the two remained so protective of each other. It was the reason they’d always rush out their doors when they heard the other’s call. It was the reason John had given Nora the emergency kit of chems when he could no longer travel with her and why she’d written an apology to him on her arm when she’d made the decision to take the fifth dose long before she needed it.

Exactly what it was that caused the change in tone and physicality between them; no one ever asked and they never told. Which isn’t to say that the people closest to them weren’t aware. 

Deacon cataloged the haunting looks that passed between them every time they met, some untold horror reflected between their eyes, that they relived each time they saw one another. He never missed the relief they both wore in each embraced hello and the ferocity with which they held each other when it came time to say goodbye. Deacon saw how one touch between them could stop the other from screaming.

Fahrenheit would, on very rare occasions, send one of the boys to Diamond City, returning with Nora in tow, and leaving her with John in his office, while she stood guard outside the door. She’d find them sleeping late the next morning, fully clothed and clinging in a tangled mess together on the couch; relieved to find the nightmares and tremors that not even Jet could fix, had finally passed, and John back to his old self again by noon, no worse for the wear. 

Nick, the old Nick still made of metal and coolant, knew more of it; because he knew both John and Nora better than anyone else in the Commonwealth and because he was a damn good detective. He’d collected the evidence in several years worth of books full of their small ticks and trembles, in data banks that compiled the cause for new found habits, and in reams of paper written in partial phrases that began with “When we were trapped in that place…”. He watched them. He listened to them. And he learned everything he could in their small moments.

Nora’s need to check the locks on the door of every unknown location, John’s strange habit of counting steps under his breath when he walked through winding hallways, a shared fear of those damn cymbal clanking monkeys that went beyond phobia, straight into sheer terror, and a general avoidance of jail cell doors and parking garages. 

The deep breath both took after a long day inside and the first calming moment, when they felt the breeze against their faces and closed their eyes in relief.

A timeline was eventually put together in The Great Synth Detective’s mind, after each of them had let enough slip in words and actions, and a picture began to form in the gaps of information. The conclusions that Nick came to were horrifying and his heart had ached for both of them.

They’d ventured into the wrong building, cocksure and confident as only they were together. They’d been invited; it’d been a trap.

The door had locked and the only way out was forward At some point they’d been separated, took the wrong path, couldn’t go back. They’d spent a more than one full day apart, calling to one another until their voices were raw, and as their injuries piled up and the supplies ran out, they’d fought long and hard to keep the other moving and alive. 

_Something_ had happened to Nora, _not_ by a who, but by a _what_. That same something happened to John sometime later when he’d stumbled upon her path. That something left them both _branded_ with matching deep scars across one shoulder and no stimpaks left to stop the bleeding. 

They’d spent a night with a partial wall between them, probably a cell door, with only enough room for their hands to meet and whispered promises to each other that they’d survive somehow. And when they’d finally found each other again, John had taken a back full of lead for her, so near the exit, they’d both cried. She’d dragged him by one arm to their freedom and scavenged alone for enough stimpaks from a nearby hospital to keep them both alive.

Wherever it was, they’d been there together a full seven days.

And those seven days had left them with a lifetime of fear that they’d someday lose the other when they weren’t looking.

It was the closest anyone came to knowing the full truth. Didn’t mean there weren’t rumors, though.

Even after Nick and Nora had married, people still had the audacity to talk. Not people who mattered, but the scum that made it their business to start trouble.

In hushed whispers and through gossip, the worst among them imagined clandestine affairs and some sort of twisted love triangle. But if Nick had ever worried what Nora felt for the Mayor was anything more than friendship, John Hancock set him straight, and on the extremely rare occasions that one of the gun ghouls showed up from Goodneighbor, begging to borrow Nora for their boss that evening, Nick had let her go, with far more worry for Hancock’s health than the now and then rumors the dregs of society could cook up when they were bored.

Nick could see, firsthand, the scars of their suffering. He knew they’d endured something together he could never fully understand, much as he wanted to. The pair had trusted Nick enough with their secrets that he began to go with her on those occasions, and he’d sit with them in that office, one asleep on either side of him, with their hands clasped in his lap. Nick’s familiar presence and the sound of his pumping coolant reassured them without words that they had both survived. They had managed to escape.

Which was why, without Nick, as they stood there before her army, both John and Nora knew, so long as they were together, they might just survive this, despite the familiar arrows pointing with invitation for them to enter Ayo’s trap. It felt too similar a scenario to allow them their usual confidence, but if they stayed close and on the same path this time, they might just find the exit again.

After that maze, they could survive anything.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” she breathed the words into his ruffled shirt.

“Hey, now,” the low rasp of his voice reverberated through his chest. “You and me together? The world ain’t got a prayer.”

“Just like old times?” she pulled back, swiping at an eye with the back of her hand.

“Just like old times,” he agreed, catching the last bit of moisture from the corner of her eye with the rough pad of his thumb. “Must be raining.”

“Yeah, must be,” she laughed. “You alright?”

“You know me, always good to go,” He reached down and retrieved her hat. “How’s Nick doin’?

“It’s kind of a mess right now,” she admitted, allowing him to pop her headgear back into place.

“Don’t let it eat ya. It’ll work itself out,” he murmured. “You two are too tight for any shit to get in the way for long.”

“Let’s hope so,” she shook her head. “Gotta live through this one first.”

“Goodneighbor’s got your back,” he clasped her shoulder. “Just keep your eyes to the front and let us take care of the rest.”

They parted then as they always did, still a little shaky, but secure in the knowledge that both of them were alive for the present.

Nora’s small group continued forward after that, Deacon and Hancock falling into lockstep beside her. They ran into Cait and Ronnie Shaw, both revved up and ready to brawl and a little farther down the line, MacCready and his contingent of snipers from Sanctuary.

“You point, I’ll shoot,” he gave her that cocky, boyish grin of his. “My group will make sure you’re covered.”

“Never doubted it for a minute, Mac,” she socked him in the arm.

“I’ll keep you in my scope, boss,” he winked.

Strong was easy to spot in the crowd, standing nearby to MacCready’s group. He assured her in very few words that he was ready to crush all the metal men in her path. They never did quite find the source of the Milk of Human kindness together, and neither he, nor Nick ever came to terms, but whatever time Strong had spent with Nora, he seemed to have found something he was looking for by the way he hovered and glared at any stranger that got too close when her back was turned. Woe be the man or woman who got between the super mutant and Nora.

As they walked and Nora thanked the remaining allied forces who had shown up with guns and soldiers ready to throw in their support, Nora came to the very end of the crowd and stopped dead in her tracks.

There in his full power suit, standing beside Scribe Haylen, was Paladin Danse. 

The former Brotherhood of Steel soldier and Nora stared at each other a long moment in that break in the crowd. He had no banner, no markings to identify him any longer on the armor, and only the friendship of a former colleague Nora had saved from the Cambridge Police Station, to his name. He’d declared in no uncertain terms how much he _hated_ his former friend and had warned her to keep her distance from him when she’d had to order the attack on the Prydwen, after Maxon had openly tried to overthrow the Castle. They’d parted ways on a cold autumn day, under his declaration that they were enemies.

And yet, he was standing here now.

Beside her, Nora saw Hancock’s hand twitch for his shotgun, and though outwardly cool, Deacon was tensed and ready for a fight. Nora’s hands brushed both of her companions in a subtle but staying gesture, and she took a step forward, beyond their line.

“Paladin Danse,” she said calmly, watching his every reaction with the modified rifle, huge and at the ready in his grip.

For a long moment, Danse said nothing. Beside him, Scribe Haylen cleared her throat. When he didn’t respond, she tried to subtly nudge him, an action made blatant by the difference in their size and the force it took to get him to notice through all that armor.

Nora stifled a grin.

Haylen had been furious with her when Nora and Nick had pulled her from the burning Police Station. With a broken leg, she’d demanded a quick death at the hand of her enemy. Her attitude had softened when Nora had yelled back something about showing mercy over murder and though they hadn’t spoken since they’d taken her to Danse’s bunker, it seemed like she’d taken Nora’s words to heart.

“I..,” Danse started, glaring down at Haylen before returning a hardened gaze to Nora. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. Scribe Haylen and I are not here for _you_. You and I are still mortal enemies after what you did to the Brotherhood.”

“Glad we got that sorted out,” Deacon muttered behind her. Nora gestured with two fingers on the hand that matched Deacon’s side and he coughed. “Right, sorry. My bad.”

Danse’s expression dropped from hardened soldier to confused boy scout for a moment as he watched the exchange, before rolling his shoulders and regaining his composure. After all they’d been through, he was still like an awkward puppy standing before her.

“As I was saying,” he cleared his throat. “We didn’t come here to aid you.”

Nora considered him a moment.

“All right.”

Danse looked taken aback by her answer. He’d expected her to argue.

“Uh...right. That’s right. Moving on,” he looked flustered. “That said, Scribe Haylen and I are still sworn to protect the people of the Commonwealth and to deal with gross misuse of technology that could seriously threaten the safety of the common citizen. Therefore, we’ve taken it upon ourselves to ally with the Minutemen for this battle, and we offer our aid in the coming fight.”

“I understand your position,” Nora started, ignoring Hancock’s snort of disgust somewhere behind her. “Any and all who are willing to join us against Justin Ayo are welcome. We... _I_ appreciate this, Danse. Truly.”

“Yes, well,” he flushed and looked away. “Just remember...it’s not for you.”

“I know,” she smiled at him. “And, thank you.”

Danse and Haylen nodded in unison and together walked off towards the temporary requisitions tent that was helping some of the soldiers into the Minutemen’s small collection of power armor.

“Well..,” Deacon shrugged, hands still in his pockets, as he and Hancock came back to her sides. “That was certainly...something.”

Nora shot him a dirty look, before smiling and shaking her head.

“Do me a favor?” She asked him. “Get Deegan’s itinerary so we can get this show on the road. If we have to do this, I’d rather not be fighting those things at night.”

“Can do, boss!” He gave her a ridiculous salute and wiggled his hips out of the way as she swatted at him before disappearing into the crowd.

“Crazy man,” she said under her breath, amused.

“You holdin’ up alright?” Hancock wrapped the back of her neck with his palm, fingers rolling against the tension he felt there, as they stood, together, looking out over the sea of soldiers.

“Just a bit overwhelmed,” Nora admitted, leaning back into the familiar touch.

He’d done the same thing when she’d been lying on the floor of that garage, wounded and hungry and ready to die.

They remained there, side by side, watching the various groups pulling their gear and people together. Nora crossed her arms and shook her head.

“There’s just so many of them,” she murmured.

“Like it or not, your name carries weight these days,” he rasped. “Did a lot of good for the Commonwealth since you woke up. People ain’t forgot that. They know who you are.”

Hancock reached into his coat pocket, pulling out a pair of cigarettes and handing one to Nora. She pulled out her silver lighter and passed it to him once hers had been lit. She’d done the same thing two days after she’d pulled him through that exit door, despite him begging her to leave him behind. After she’d told him not to die on her. After she’d left him on shaky legs for hours, bleeding on those concrete stairs, only to return with a shitton of chems, food and stimpaks. After they’d lay there, side by side, half starved and half dead, trying to believe they were still alive as they felt the burn of smoke in their lungs and the grip of a friend in their hands.

John shook his head.

“Have to be blind not to see that times are changin’ for the better after all you’ve done. A hell of lotta people out there owe you their lives, me included,” he took a drag from his smoke as he talked. “ And the one time you need something in return? You think they’re not gonna want to pay back the favor?”

He flicked the ash from his cigarette.

“You’re somethin’ unique, Nora. I know it. Nick knows it,” he shook his head. “The whole damn world knows it. You know how rare the chance is to stand next to someone special like that?”

“Is that why you’re here?” She asked quietly, pulling a drag from her own smoke and letting her eyes brush over the crowd. 

She wondered how many they’d lose.

She hoped to keep that number small.

“You know me better than that. After all the shit we’ve been through together,” His hand found hers and their grip on each other kept them grounded. “Still, it’s been a long time since it was just you and me on that road together. Doin’ good for the people. Survivin’.”

He looked at her in earnest now. The look of a friend that truly knew her.

“You can’t help but change people, Nora. There’s just somethin’ about you that makes folks wanna keep on tryin’,” his black eyes met her blue. “You know I’ve always got your back, but this? This is you at your best.”

John grinned at her.

“All these people, they’re just like me. Rallying around the Lady of the Commonwealth,” his voice was back to that low rasping drawl as he squeezed her hand tight. “Waiting for that moment when they’re standing in her sunshine hoping some of that warmth she spreads around might come their way.”

Nora leaned against John, resting her head against his shoulder.

“Hey John,” she said quietly. “If anything happens, same rules apply as last time. Take care of Nick for me. I want him safe.”

“Ain’t nothing gonna happen, Sunshine,” he rested his head atop hers. “I’ll be right behind you all the way.”

“Just like old times?” she sighed.

“Just like old times,” he nodded.


	21. Battle Cry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another update for you! : )

Deacon had eventually returned with both Deegan and the battle itinerary in tow. Hancock and Nora had rounded up all the key players to discuss their plan of attack based on the recon information they’d received from their scouts. They stood together now, beneath a hastily constructed tent going over their plan.

The message Ayo had left for Nora was currently still on display in the C.I.T courtyard. There were at least 100 synth troopers visible patrolling the perimeter, but the possibility of more being in the ruined buildings was high. No one was certain where Ayo had gotten that many synths from, but he’d supplemented his troops with old protectrons and military bots. He had at least one Assaultron to his name, which Hancock assured them K.L.E.O would deal with, but the Sentry Bots were a problem. They were heavy hitters and well armored. They’d have to use the majority of their power suit soldiers to help take them out, which left less shielding to their forward group.

Zain proved extremely helpful in calculating Ayo’s probable movements. He’d been assigned to clean up Ayo’s “experiments” on more than one occasion and had spent hours in the man’s company as just another shadow on the wall with a broom.

“He will be somewhere where you can see him,” Zain assured Nora. “He will want to be seen. The CSC and P.A.M predict the most likely place will be on the roof of C.I.T.”

“Which means we’ll have to cut through the building,” Preston frowned.

“Lotta tight hallways,” MacCready shook his head. “Not a lot of sightlines. Anything could pop out at you in there.”

Hancock and Nora shared a knowing look. She gave his hand a squeeze.

“He won’t make it easy to get to him, however,” Zain followed up. “He believes he is worthy to challenge you, not the other way around. He will make you prove it.”

“So I’ll have to fight my way there,” she sighed in agreement. 

It certainly sounded like Ayo’s M.O. The man had an out of control God complex if she’d ever seen one.

“Early prediction models would indicate he will flood the courtyard with troops as per standard Institute military protocols,” Zain said.

“That sounds like a lotta synths to wade through,” Preston shook his head.

“He also likes control,” Zain continued. “Do not expect his attacks to be random. He will have planned. He will have prepared.”

“And he’s had years to do it,” Piper frowned.

Zain turned to Nora then.

“You know he will not just attack you with rifles,” his voice was soft. “He is a master of psychological warfare. Do not doubt that he will try to break you.”

“Not the first time he’s tried mess with my head,” she wrapped her arms around herself, trying to clear her thoughts from bad times and bad places. “Let’s make today the last.”

“All is not so grim,” Zain nodded in agreement with her. “Doctor Ayo is many things, but he is most of all, arrogant.”

“Ego can be the downfall of any man,” Danse added in. “If he believes he has the upper hand, it may allow us a window to take him down.”

“So, how d’ya want to play this?” Cait crossed her arms, looking at Nora. “Do we take out the troops first or just go straight for his big fat head?”

“There’s no telling how many bots he has at his disposal,” Preston shook his head. “The Minutemen can deal with the ground troops. Our priority should be taking out Ayo.”

“Body has a hard time moving once you pop the head off,” MacCready agreed grimly. “We should cut right down the middle. Get to the target before our numbers wear thin with one clean bullet.”

“Strong cut through many targets,” Strong nodded. “Strong will lead bullet into battle.”

“That could work,” Deegan acknowledged, his years of mercenary work providing answers for the numbers he was currently running in his mind. “We send a group straight through the centerline. Keep Nora in the middle, and armor out from there.”

He turned to face her.

“With luck, the outer rim will keep them off you long enough for us to slingshot you straight to him,” he could see the concern already forming in her eyes. “Let us worry about keeping your path clear. Conserve your strength for the guy pulling the strings.”

“It’s a solid plan of attack,” Danse backed him up, forgetting his enemy routine, and addressing Nora as he used to. “It would allow us to infiltrate his defenses with a small strike team and get to the real battle.”

“It also means,” Nora frowned. “That once we’re in, they’ve got the chance to close off the route behind us.” 

“It’s a one way street to Ayo,” Deegan agreed. “Assuming he has more troops waiting for us, we won’t be able to make the cut through twice. Once you hit the doors, you can’t turn back or you’ll get swallowed up by the synths. Gotta finish it from there.”

“Just keep your eyes forward,” John touched her wrist gently. “Straight for the exit.”

“So, who’s followin’ ya into hell this time?” Ronnie gave Nora a sharp, but supportive look. 

“Strong will lead charge,” Strong announced again. “Crush all metal men in our path.”

“Paladin Danse and I can take point behind Strong,” Preston offered. “We can keep the waves from closing in on the rest of the group from that position.”

“Just like a ship,” Nora nodded. “We’ll be walking down the wake’s center.”

“Ronnie and I kin handle your flanks,” Cait flexed her arms as she set her hands to rest at her hips. “Anythin’ tries to get close and we’ll bash ‘em right back.”

Ronnie grinned her approval. She was a tough old bird.

“I’ll handle the rear,” Hancock threw in. “Someone’s gotta watch yer back.”

“The synths will be swarming us when they regain their footing on that side,” Deegan shook his head. “There won’t be a more dangerous place on the field. It’s a two man job, at least.”

“You sayin’ I can’t handle it old man?” John postured.

“No,” Deegan laughed that raspy laugh of his. “But I’ll take position with you so you’ll have a chance to reload now and then. Coupla ghouls at the back of the party might make ‘em think twice about trying their luck.”

“Heh,” Hancock was amused by that. “Dunno if synths scare that easy, but I guess we’ll just have to find out.”

“That still leaves Nora alone in the center of it all,” Piper noted thoughtfully.

“Nah, it’s all good,” Deacon looped his arm through Nora’s. “We’re planning on talking about all the boys we like on the way in. Prom’s coming up, you know how it is.”

“I will also join you for this conversation,” Zain nodded, causing both Nora and Deacon to snort.

“You’ll have full cover from the backfield,” MacCready ignored them. “I’ve got fifteen of my best snipers from Sanctuary in the line. We’ll make sure nothing has the chance to sneak up on you.”

“I’ll point, you shoot,” Nora smiled at him.

“You got it, boss. Just keep your head down,” he nodded. “You’ll be in the kill zone if Ayo puts anything on those roofs.”

“Sounds like a plan,” she agreed.

“Let’s get movin’ then!” Ronnie shouldered her rifle and headed out of the tent. “I’ll tell the boys to get ready.”

As the group began to disperse, Nora caught the Deegan by the arm.

“What can I do for ya?”

“Ed,” she started, directing him with her eyes to a group of five young Minutemen standing under a nearby tree. “I’ve got a group of kids here from Diamond City.”

He frowned.

“Too green to be anywhere near the frontlines if they haven’t cut their teeth by way of the Castle yet,” he said thoughtfully. “Where do you want them?”

“Have them stationed at the medical tents,” she murmured. “It’ll keep them out of the battle line and they can provide cover for the incoming wounded.”

“Consider it done,” he patted her hand.

“I appreciate it,” she nodded.

“Hard to believe anyone these days could be that young,” he shook his head. “Can’t remember anymore if I ever was.”

“Neither do I,” she agreed quietly.

“I’ll see you out there, kid,” he left her with a grin.

“Once more into the fray,” she sighed.

Nora turned back then, to find John and Deacon quietly discussing something.

“You guys want to share with the class, or is this a private session?” She smiled at them.

“Just goin’ over some details,” Hancock reassured her. 

“With _Deacon_?” She looked at him doubtfully.

John and Deacon had a...tentative relationship at best.

“Yes, with Deacon, I’m a details sort of guy!” Deacon laughed and hooked his arm through hers once more, leading her out of the tent. “But seriously, Hancock was just filling me in on his lemon bar recipe. Delish!”

“Liar,” she laughed and let it go. They could keep their secrets, for now. “You don’t even know what a lemon is.”

“Some kind of car,” he quipped, grinning like an idiot.

He led Nora to the front of the army, where the people were waiting for them. While they’d been planning, the soldiers had been breaking down the encampments and running gear checks.

They looked at her now, ready to go.

“Now what?” She whispered to Deacon, feeling a thousand sets of eyes on them at once.

“Now you make with the big rah rah speech and we get a move on,” he shoved her forward. “You know, that thing Dez does all the time.”

Nora’s lips formed a tight, sarcastic line across her jaw.

_“Thanks.”_

Deacon grinned back.

_“You got this.”_

Nora stepped forward. She couldn’t see over the front of the line.

“Tiny humans are too small,” Strong was suddenly at her side. “Better if bigger, like super mutants.”

Nora nodded. She couldn’t argue with that.

Strong picked her up like a doll and set her on his shoulder, holding her steady with one massive hand. Nora swallowed. It was easy to forget how little effort it would take for one of those hands to crush her into pulp. She was glad Strong was on their side.

From his shoulder, she could see the whole of her army now. The Commonwealth united once again under the span of her white wings. She prayed they could help her fly to where she needed to go today. She prayed they’d all survive.

To her left, Tom stood pointing at his ear and then to P.A.M. Nora got the picture.

Tapping her version of C.L.A.R.A, she heard a tiny beep and then soft white noise. She spoke and her voice was amplified through P.A.M, reaching out to the far back of the crowd.

“Hello?” She tested, hearing her voice echo around the field.

She took a deep breath. It was time for her closing arguments and the courtroom floor was hers.

“Some of you know me,” she began. “Some of us have fought together before. At the Institute, at the Castle, against the Brotherhood. Some of us have never met until today, and some of you have heard stories about me being ten feet high with eight arms and a frozen stare.”

“Eleven feet!” Someone shouted from the crowd, eliciting laughter.

Nora grinned. At least the jury was in her favor.

“I’ve been called the Lady of the Commonwealth, and the Angel with White Wings,” she continued. “But the truth is, I’m just one woman, by the name of Nora Valentine, and I’m here today to fight for the people and the free cities that I love.”

She paused. _Always pause_ , her father used to say, give them time to take it in. Make your case so they can _feel_ it.

“When I first woke up in this world, I was scared and alone,” she looked up again. “I fought because I was scared of dying. I fought because I feared Death. But along the road, I found people to care for. People who cared about me. I was no longer alone. And I took courage in that. I take courage in the people of the Commonwealth, because when we stand together, none of us has to fight alone.”

Nora pointed in the direction of the C.I.T. She imagined Ayo sitting across the courtroom from her now, evidence ironclad for murder against the accused.

“There’s a monster out there waiting for us, right now. A monster who should have died when the Institute fell. A monster who now threatens the Commonwealth and all the people and places that we love,” she choked back the guilt for not killing him then and tried not to think about the lives it would cost now. “The battle before us will not be an easy one, but if we stand together now, united against letting him take from us the things we hold most dear, then we may find courage in knowing we don’t have to face this threat alone.”

She could almost hear her father’s voice now, taking her through the motions as he walked her through her first case in his little office practice. Norm Connolly had been a small man, but a force to be reckoned with in the courts. His last words from that day echoed in her mind now and she held firmly to them.

_“Inspire them, Nora. Inspire them to fight the injustice with you.”_

“I no longer fight because I’m afraid of Death,” she gazed out into the crowd with blue eyes full of steel. “I fight now, because I want to live. I fight now, because there are people I care for who need me to fight, and I fight for the Commonwealth, because it’s my home. Today, you fight under the banner of White Wings. Take courage with me now, fight with me so that we can live, and together, when that monster is dead and the people are once again free, we’ll ride the winds under the safety of those wings and let them carry us back to our homes.”

Nora threw her right arm skyward, fist closed and rallying.

“My name is Nora Valentine, and I’m here to fight for the Commonwealth! Who amongst you will stand with me? Who amongst you will fight by my side today?”

The crowd before her roared. The sound was long and deafening.

Somewhere behind where Nora still perched on Strong’s shoulder, rallying the citizens of her army, Deacon and John Hancock watched from a distance, standing side by side. The thunder of the crowd washed over them, the very air around them holding it’s quake.

“Christ,” Deacon shook his head. “Way to go, Charmer.”

Hancock looked over at Deacon for a moment, before turning his attention back to Nora.

“Don’t flake out on me,” John murmured. "Make sure you got what ya need."

“I know what I’m doing,” Deacon returned. “You coming?”

John was quiet for a moment, his dark eyes fixed on Nora.

“Nah, gonna stay here for a bit,” he said quietly. 

“You take care of yourself, Hancock,” Deacon patted his shoulder.

“You, too, Deacon,” he responded.

And as Deacon went to grab his bag of tricks, John stood there in her sunshine, letting her warmth spread through his skin.

“There’s that something special, Nora,” he shook his head. “Right there.” 

When the crowd was ready, Deegan gave the marching orders to move out.

It was a short walk to the C.I.T., but it was the longest fifteen minutes of Nora’s life.

John and Deacon hugged her sides again, Strong and Danse walking just a bit before them, with Deegan and Preston just behind. Piper had fallen back with the medics, after promising both Preston and Nora she wouldn’t do anything foolish for her story, while MacCready, Zain, and Cait were somewhere farther back with the soldiers they’d brought with them.

As she walked, Nora’s hand went to the ring still hanging from the length of leather at her neck. She prayed for the strength to make it through the upcoming battle, so that she might someday see that neon sign on Third Street one more time.

As they neared the University ruins, Nora’s hand slid against Hancock’s ruined palm. They were walking straight into a trap together again and they both knew it. 

“Don’t die out there without me, Sunshine,” he murmured to her.

“Just gotta make it to the exit, John,” her smiled was ruined by the slight quiver in her lips. “Don’t take a separate path from me this time.” 

“Door is locked behind you,” he rasped. “Only way out is forward.”

Nora couldn’t look at him. She didn’t like what he was saying beneath his words.

“I would have died in that garage with you, before I left you behind,” she said adamantly.

John turned towards her, holding out a pair of mentats.

“I want you to live, Nora,” he used the same line on her the last time he’d given her chems. “Just two, to keep you sharp.”

She took them warily from him. The chems weren’t scaring her right now, but she knew that look in John’s eyes. She’d seen it in them before. In that damn maze. When he was dying.

She popped them in her mouth and chewed through the metallic berry taste. She watched John take three and do the same. As the fog lifted, and the world around her came into super focus, Nora reached into her postman’s bag, pulling out three of her stimpaks.

Without asking, she slid them into John’s coat pocket. He started to protest when he saw what she was doing, but she stopped him before he could give them back.

“I brought plenty with me this time,” she told him. They both knew the time she _hadn’t_ , all too well. “Just do this for me, John. If I can’t fight by your side today, then I need to know you’ll survive.”

“Still dragging me out by the arm,” he shook his head. He looked thoughtful for a moment, before reaching into his other pocket and pulling out an inhaler of Jet. “Take this. Not right now, just pocket it.”

“Always giving me drugs,” she laughed.

“One puff if shit goes sideways on you,” he explained carefully. “The effect don’t last long, but you’re clean. It’s gonna slow the whole damn world down, give you time to think with the mentats.”

He watched her pocket the inhaler in her jeans.

“You’re gonna feel real slow, but your brain is gonna be focused. Then you put your bullets where they need to go, before your cheeks start tingling. That’s your timeline, you feel me? Jet runs out, time’s gonna start movin’ real fast again.”

“I feel you,” she nodded. 

He gave her palm a squeeze and let go of her hand.

Ahead of them, Paladin Danse dropped back from his position near Strong, waiting for Nora’s group to catch up. 

“Something you need, Danse?” She asked him as he started walking again, ignoring Deacon’s protests as Danse fell into step in his spot. 

“We’re going up against Institute synths today,” he stated plainly.

“That’s true,” Nora replied before one of her other boys could do so for her.

“Here,” he reached out and handed her what looked like a small flat metal disk with a button on it. “I want you to have this. It’s the last of my supply.”

“What is it?” Nora asked, holding it up for a better look.

“A mini EMP,” he told her. “The Brotherhood uses them for disabling small tech. Computers, doors...it won’t take out a whole synth, but it can disable anything as big as my rifle. If you need to.”

“That’s a pretty big rifle,” she said thoughtfully, pocketing it with the Jet.

Danse flushed.

“Yes, well, it’s standard issue,” he cleared his throat. “To deploy it, just slam it down and press the button. It will magnetize itself to the target. The EMP pulse deploys on contact.”

“I appreciate it, Danse,” Nora nodded.

“Good,” he nodded back. “Ad Victorium, Sister.”

There were those damn puppy eyes again.

“Ad Victorium, Paladin Danse.”

The former Brotherhood member seemed pleased by that and with another sharp nod, he ran to take up his position again. Nora thought it was a considerate gift. Considerate and useful.

“You really shouldn’t encourage him,” Deacon slid back into position beside her. “If his head gets any bigger it won’t fit into his helmet.”

“To be fair, it’s a pretty big helmet,” she winked

“Do tell,” he waggled his eyebrows at her.

Their momentary merriment was short lived as they entered the University ruins and a scout with short, curly brown hair came running up.

“Ma’am,” she tipped her hat at Nora, before turning to Deegan as he walked up. “General.”

“What’s the word, Bell?” He addressed her by name.

“No change in numbers yet, but the patrols have picked up in time,” she informed him. 

“The...the message is still waiting in the courtyard, sir.”

“What _is_ the message?” Nora eyed her carefully.

Bell looked at Deegan.

“Ayo...he left you something, Nora,” Edward sighed. “Sanctuary wasn’t able to verify it’s authenticity for us before they’d left. I…”

He grimaced.

“I just want you to be prepared for the worst.”

Nora considered his warning a long moment, before turning to Bell. 

“Take me to it.”

“We’ll get set up here,” Deegan informed them. “Take your time.”

Bell nodded and walked Nora’s small group along a path that wound around the front of the university. From here, they could see the synths patrolling in the distance, but were far enough out and under cover to be safe. 

Bell pointed at some sort of structure in the courtyard, but from this far out, Nora couldn’t tell what she was looking at.

“I don’t see anything.”

Bell hesitated, before removing her binoculars.

“Here. Dead center. Look for the heart.”

“The hear—?” Nora began to ask as she raised the binoculars.

She dropped them immediately, Deacon’s hand shooting out to catch them. Nora was suddenly gasping for air and she turned away, falling to her knees. Hancock was beside her before her forehead could touch the ground.

“What is it?” He snarled over his shoulder, rubbing against Nora’s back with a rough palm while she struggled to breathe.

Deacon held up the binoculars, swinging them around and looking for a heart.

He found it.

“Jesus,” he hissed.

A large metal lamppost stood in the center of the square. A metal heart cut out of a trash bin was nailed halfway up, containing a word painted in bright red letters.

NORA

Beneath it was a body; slumped over in the dirt and leaning against the post. It was Nick’s body. His synth one. Still wearing his old trench coat and hat. The wound on his stomach was visible again and the ground was fairly covered in black coolant. Obviously staged. He hadn’t had that much left in him.

“Deacon,” Hancock rasped.

“It’s Nick,” he sighed. “Looks like they dug up his synth shell.”

“Fuckin’ hell,” Hancock growled. “You sure?”

“I’d recognize his old hat and trench coat anywhere,” Deacon said quietly. “He’s messing with her.”

“No shit,” Hancock looked at him like he was an idiot. “He’s messin’ with all of us now.”

Nora’s eyes stared at the dirt just before her as she curled into herself. The blood was pounding through her ears and chest and air was difficult to get in. He looked just like that day after the party. Sitting propped up against the Corvega, coolant everywhere and that huge fucking hole in his…

Wait.

_Wait._

She forced her breathing to slow, forced the world to slow down, tried to allow the mentats to do their thing. She could feel John’s hand on her back now. She could hear Deacon’s voice and the soft whisper of a breeze and she thought back to that day on the Old North Church steps when Nick, as he was now, had been sitting right next to her. 

_“Saw that husband of yours recently. He looked different.”_

Deegan had said that to her just a few hours ago.

He looked _different_.

He _looked_ different.

Nora raised her head, eyes shrewd and mind focused.

“You alright, Sunshine?” John murmured.

“Give me the binoculars.”

“Comon’ Nora, you don’t need to see that shit,” he shook his head.

“Give me the _damned_ binoculars,” she repeated, stumbling to her feet, and holding out her hand.

Deacon and Hancock looked at one another. Deacon shrugged.

He handed her the binoculars.

“What are you hoping to see?” He asked quietly, his hand still holding one side of them.

“Something _different_ ,” she murmured and the way she said it, like she knew something now she didn’t a moment before, made Deacon let go.

Nora held them back up to her face. She saw the heart with her name on it and slowly followed the pole down. It was still too far. Too far to tell.

“How do I up the magnification on these things?” She asked.

“Here, I’ll do it,” Bell reached forward, cranking a silver knob on the side while Nora held them to her face. “Just say when.”

Closer.

Closer.

“Stop!” Nora cried. “Right there, stop!”

The magnification was close enough now she could see his clothing in detail. The coat was torn. And the hat, the hat was _faded_.

“That son of a bitch,” she breathed. “It’s not Nick. Not even close.”

“What?” Deacon wondered if she’d lost it as she handed him the binoculars back and urged him to look. “You sure, Charmer?”

“Oh, it sure looks like Nick,” she growled. “Looks just like he did when he was sitting there bleeding out where X6 left him. But that shell’s hat is all beat to hell and _faded_.”

“So?” Deacon shook his head in confusion.

“That last morning at HQ,” Nora said wistfully. “Nick traded their hats. The body we sent to Red Rocket was wearing a brand new black fedora.”

Deacon looked genuinely surprised. He looked through the binoculars again.

“She’s right,” he chuckled. “Jesus, this guy is an _asshole_.”

“We’re gonna murder that fucking piece of shit,” Hancock rumbled, taking his turn with the binoculars. “ _Seriously_ , what the fuck is up with this guy…”

“I know, who does that, right?” Deacon shrugged. “I mean, jeez, at least send a bouquet of bloatflies first.”

“No manners these days,” Nora laughed and swiped at her eyes with the back of her glove.

Bell looked sincerely confused at their dark humor.

“Um, ma’am,” she interrupted. “What do you want me to tell the General?”

Nora’s eyes narrowed as she stared at the distant roof of the C.I.T building.

“Tell him to get ready,” she said, steel back in her voice. “We’re going to _war_.”


	22. Take the Shot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew~! That was a long one!

Nora woke to the sound of her ears ringing and to MacCready’s voice crackling in her ear.

“B-..b-oss?” 

There was blood on her tongue and copper down her throat.

Her body felt strange. The kind of strange you feel waking up after a long night of drinking. Groggy, aching and with a floating kind of numbness in your head that leaves you just a little bit sea sick. Her upper body was lying on something soft. Warm. 

“N-n-n-n-orra?”

She could smell sugar, no snack cake frosting. Snack cake frosting and dirt. The kind of earthy dirt from her rose garden in that apartment she’d had downtown; the one that Buster had helped her pick out, because it was close to his and had a balcony with pretty iron railings and enough room for a rose garden. He’d made a joke about her sitting out there in the evenings like some kind of Juliet, waiting for her prince to come find her, so she could ask him up to her place for a little actus reus. She told him it’d be easier to ask the prince up so he could take a look at her briefs. 

They’d laughed. They were always laughing together, her brother and her.

God, she wanted a cigarette right now. Her head felt like it was swimming and she flexed her fingers painfully, just to make sure they were still on her hand.

Strange. There was the feeling of soft cotton under one of her palms and something wet and sticky under the other. The cotton felt sun-warmed, the sticky wetness was hot. It coated her palm and made it hard to get her grip.

_What happened?_

They’d been...they’d been ready to face down Ayo as the sun was just starting to set. She knew because she’d lamented the loss of the blue sky as it turned to a faded pink. She hadn’t wanted to fight in the dark. 

Deacon had been beside her. He had a postman’s bag on similar to hers. She knew because she’d seen him with it before, full of disguise pieces and flash bangs and that extra stealth boy he carried for emergencies. It had “Death Bunnies” painted on it in pink glitter; the same thing he’d wanted to write on hers once, but hadn’t gotten around to doing.

John had been behind her, always watching her back, like Nick. His shotgun was at the ready, but he looked nervous; wary. She’d seen him and Deacon talking earlier. Saw them standing shoulder to shoulder with their backs to her before the battle. She would have sworn each of them handed something to the other. Was it ammo? Maybe it was ammo. No. Deacon had handed something to John that was big. John handed Deacon something that was small. Whatever it was, they were swapping secrets and she remembered not liking it.

But then, Tom had been ready for her and she’d given the nod and Deegan sent the order and they’d delivered their message to Justin Ayo in a hail of grenades launched at that fake Nick he’d left for her. The Gen 2 that’d been lying in that trench coat stumbled to its feet in a high pitched, mechanical scream as it caught fire, dropping the pistol it’d been holding while in wait.

Ayo had laughed at that.

God, that laugh.

His voice was everywhere at once, through some kind of loud speakers. Booming around them in mocking glee.

_“What’s the matter, Mother? Didn’t like my Valentine?”_

She was going to kill him. She’d thought that at the time. She’d wanted to shove her fist down his throat and rip out his tongue and make sure Nick would never have to hear that shrill laugh in his newly minted lifetime.

The smoke and dirt from the Minutemen’s grenades was giving him good cover, but Mac had caught his shadow through the dust. He’d done the calculations and on Nora’s order took his shot, but despite the crack of MacCready’s caliber, the loud ping that came after had been deafening.

He’d been wearing power armor. Some kind of a modified suit according to Haylen and Danse. They’d have to hit the fusion core, which meant they had to get Ayo to turn around, show his back to MacCready, so that Mac could show him his bullets.

The shot had angered Ayo. He’d called her a bitch, Commonwealth trash, and a whole other slew of names that might have hurt had they not come out of that snooty, high pitched whine of a voice. Deacon had laughed and then stopped when the synths suddenly showed up.

Ayo’s forces had revealed themselves in full, pouring out from the ruins just as Zain had earlier predicted. But they were so many, troopers among troopers, and Nora realized just as Ayo said it--the mass genocide Father had once been planning had gone farther than just the whiteboard stage. The Institute had been stockpiling soldiers on the surface for an invasion in underground lockers where no one knew they been hiding. 

He’d been planning this a long time.

He taunted her to come find him, doubting she’d make it that far. John said something crass behind her and Deacon had taken hold of her hand and the whole army moved at once under a battle cry and Nora’s banners; flying forward with white wings and rifles drawn.

The Minutemen’s power armored patrol led the line, crashing through the Gen 1’s and troopers, sending bits of them flying as they went. They made a beeline straight for the six, hulking sentry bots, chipping away and their armor, while the infantry flooded in behind them to take care of the synth troopers. But for every bot they killed, two more came out of the buildings and soon the pink sky grew black from all the gunfire. 

It was chaos.

It was gunsmoke.

It was dirt in the air.

It was fire.

Her little group was ready and her feet were moving forward before she’d heard Deegan’s order to move out. They cut through both Minutemen and synth forces alike, spearing their way towards the door. She could hear her teammates voices loud and clear through Tom’s best new girl, CLARA, as they called out their positions and the targets that besieged them. 

Strong led them fast and hard through the tumult, swinging his giant hammer in great sweeping strikes. His roars filled Nora’s ears, reverberated through her chest, and gave her strength, shared in battle-born anger. Behind him Danse and Preston kept true to their path, laser rifles deflecting the waves of mechanical men around the outside of the group rather than through them, like a ship cutting through rough water. The troopers that didn’t break against the Minutemen’s solid wall, fell to pieces at the end of Cait’s baseball bat and the butt of Ronnie’s rifle. Behind them, she could hear the incessant shots of Deegan’s gun and the thick, heavy blasts of John’s cutoff, but she didn’t dare turn around to watch their progress.

_She’d kept her eyes to the front. She’d kept moving forward._

“S-s-speak t-to me..,” she could hear Mac now, still calling to her over the CLARA; wanted to tell him to be quiet for a moment and let her think.

_Something had gone wrong._

They were more than halfway to the door when it happened; the sharp cry of “Courser!” ringing loud over the gunfire. Nora turned just in time to see a flash of black leather, with black hair, and black sunglasses as it barreled headlong into Danse. It hit him so hard, he’d stumbled back into Cait, nearly crushing her as the synth assassin bowled them over. She’d heard Danse yell and Cait scream and then they were gone in the flood of bodies moving on the battlefield. 

The synths had broken through their wall. 

And the, all hell broke loose. She remembered drawing her pistol, as Zain brought his rifle up on her left side. They dropped ammo into the crowd of Gen 1’s like a hailstorm in the worst of winters. She was already on her third clip when the Assaultron the scout had reported seeing dropped in on Ronnie, tossing her like a rag doll, high and somewhere behind. Preston dropped back to deal with it, just as K.L.E.O burst through the ranks, Glory straight on her heels. The three of them were lost in a circle of attacks, as they took down the old-world killing machine. 

Deacon had finally drawn then, ten feet from the door. He’d yelled something at her in the same moment that Strong crested the entryway, smashing through the wood with a wave of synths following after, hell bent on slowing the green giant down as the leapt, and clawed, and clung to his massive legs and shoulders.

She’d dropped another six synths with clean shots and quick hands, when she’d stopped and swayed with rage shaking arms to reload, and she felt her shoulder brush against John’s. She turned on instinct, just in time to catch a glimpse of short brown hair and black sunglasses

Her last thought, was that he looked nothing like X6-88, as she saw him raise his rifle out of the corner of her eye. 

Time slowed to a crawl for her then.

John must have bumped him while walking backwards, and like Nora, who knew the feel of John’s back to hers by touch alone after the seven long days they’d spent trapped in that murder maze, with only the other for a lifeline; he’d turned. The butt of his shotgun cracked against the side of the Courser’s temple, and as the man between them fell, for a second...

Just one second…

John’s black eyes met her blue.

And time stopped.

In all the Commonwealth, there existed only the two of them.

The _look_ that they gave each other said worlds more in that moment, than any real words could ever say.

And then, time sped up again.

The Courser rounded, rifle again ready. John’s right hand shot out and pushed her away from him, as his left brought the shotgun back up to fire.

Nora stumbled back.

She felt the heel of her shoe slide across wood.

Her foot crossed the doorway.

And she heard two shots fired in sync.

The Courser’s head exploded in a rain of blood and metal parts. John’s shotgun shells blasting straight through it’s skull and leaving nothing behind of the black sunglasses. The body dropped to the ground.

But the _second_ shot.

The second shot had been the sharp whizzing hiss of an Institute rifle, muffled as it stuck into cloth.

She exhaled sharply. She stared at John. There was no sound, no light, no battle. Not anything anymore, but John.

His back was to her now. His coat was red. He didn’t seem to be holding his shotgun. His arm was bent from this angle, curled around his front like he was holding something to his chest. His body swayed. He glanced back at her. Not enough of his face in her direction to be a real look. It was only a glance. Just a single glance.

But in that glance, she saw his goodbye.

He took a breath.

 _“Eyes to the front!”_ He’d shouted at her, a wet sound in his low rasp she didn’t recognize. _“Ain’t nothin’ back here for you, Sunshine!”_

She’d leaned forward then. Her arm shot out. His name was there, hot on her tongue. Black eyes met blue.

He’d smiled at her.

And then she felt it. 

A sharp tug on her wrist.

And her hand disappeared in a ripple, replaced by a flood of synth troopers swarming in from the sides. She couldn’t see Deegan anymore, wasn’t sure where he’d gone. Zain was no longer by her side and the others were lost. The others were lost.

But as she was pulled backwards into the foyer of the C.I.T building; their goal, their target, the end of their run, she saw John.

She saw John at the moment of his fall.

They’d reached the second floor before Deacon’s Stealth Boy ran out and her skin came back into view. She was shaking. He was shaking. But they were both still whole and visible.

The Stealth Boy hadn’t lasted long. It never lasted long when used between two people.

But it’d lasted long enough to get _her_ out.

She’d realized with horror then what sort of devil’s bargain John and Deacon had made between them. Realized what the object was that Deacon had given to John. They’d each had a Stealth Boy; a way to get her out if shit went sideways, and one of them was forced to make her _run._

_“I want you to live, Nora.”_

How many times had he told her that through the years? How many times had she thought the same? How many days and hours and minutes the two of them had been separated in that damn garage full of horrors, with nothing to keep them going but each other’s voices and a wall they were desperate to find a way around just to find one another again?

John had been her best friend for ages. Had taken a back full of bullets for her when they’d almost made it out of that goddamned maze and had turned the corner into a turret instead. He’d begged her to leave him dying on the floor so that she could get to safety; so at least one of them would live to get out and she’d refused him adamantly, strong in the conviction that one way or another, they’d go together after all they’d been through. Life or death hadn’t mattered so much with a friend ready to walk the path with you.

She couldn’t breathe. She’d choked on his name.

_John._

Deacon was at her side in a moment. They’d stopped in that small, safe stairwell to catch their breaths.

 _“He’ll be fine,”_ he'd said with a wavering smile, his hand at her back to ground her. _“He’ll be right there waiting for us when this is all over, I promise. We can camp out and go stargazing tonight. Just the three of us.”_

Nora had wanted to believe that. She really did; but one look at his face told her everything she needed to know.

Everything she already had known.

 _“Liar,”_ she’d murmured and both knew it to be true.

_“Ain’t got nothin’ to worry about with me watchin’ your back.”_

She’d walked him straight into another trap with her.

And even though she _knew_ where the exit lay this time, in _this_ maze.

She’d had to leave John behind to get to it.

_“Don’t die out there without me, Sunshine.”_

Goddamn it.

She’d clenched her teeth to keep from losing it.

Deacon had brushed her hair away from her face with soothing words.

And then she’d stood.

Cocked her gun and said: “Let’s keep moving.”

And they had.

Eyes to the front. The only way out was forward.

She didn’t blame Deacon. She couldn’t blame John. They’d done what they’d done so she couldn’t turn back, because if push came to shove, they’d known she would. Nora never left anyone behind.

Not Deacon.

Not John.

Not Nick.

And as she and Deacon fought through the hallways, on their endless course up towards the roof, the ache in her chest became overwhelming and her endless calm began to break. She’d tried to convince herself she’d mourn her losses later, tried to convince herself that things were still all right, but when they burst into the last room before the stairwell they needed, she’d found the remains of her composure finally shatter.

There, in that room, before the roof access, was Nick.

Twelve Nicks, if she’d been counting.

All perfect Gen 2’s with his same build and handsome face. And all his scars.

Somewhere behind her, Deacon had yelled out: “Charmer!”, but she hadn’t heard him, hadn’t listened, couldn’t break from the memories that came flooding into her mind in that instant.

For a moment, Nora was staring at her _husband_. His glowing yellow eyes a sight she’d longed for in a way that hurt to admit. The tattered edge of his cheek, where the jaw hinge sat, exposed. The metal hand, that had long since lost it’s skin and felt cool and smooth when it rubbed down her arm.

And perhaps, they would have killed her. Perhaps she would have let them, bleeding and finding her last breaths while falling into that sunshine gaze.

But one of them spoke when they noticed her, and it wasn’t Nick’s _voice._

It wasn’t Nick’s tone.

And she realized what Ayo was doing to her then. He’d modified them. He’d modified them just to torture her.

With the visage of a man she loved more than life.

She’d roared then, tire iron in hand and room going red, as blood boiled and her calm tipped into anger and all the rage and the fear and the sorrow and the hatred she’d been weighed down with since this whole thing started came pouring out.

It was the only time anyone had ever truly heard her scream. It was the sound of pain. Deacon had recognized it immediately.

The same sound had come out of him once, too.

She’d launched herself at the first one with a snarl, the blade of the iron ripping through its neck. She pulled through the group, tearing through them one by one, and watching her world unravel deep in her mind’s eye, every thought, every memory, every kiss; she ripped them to shreds, until the tire iron stuck in a chest panel. She let go of the iron and reached for her pistol, sidestepping a rifle shot and taking aim. 

BAM!

_“Got a thing for antiques, eh?” He’d smirked and winked at her as she handed him the typewriter she’d found._

BAM!

_“You sure know how to make a synth feel welcome,” He’d murmured, breathing in the skin of her neck as she writhed against him from below._

BAM!

_“There any machines you can’t charm?” He’d chuckled, watching her unlock the terminal with a practiced ease after hours spent with her brother learning to lift files for his news stories._

BAM!

_“I’ll be here as long as you’ll have me,” he’d promised softly, hardly a space between them as he stood with her, before the gate._

The sound punctuated each shot with a deafening silence afterwards and when the smoke cleared, she was the only thing left standing. All twelve synths lay dead at her feet.

Deacon had said nothing. 

He hadn’t even drawn his gun.

Distantly, she could hear the war raging on outside.

Hers felt oddly _done_.

Her shoulders rose and fell in time with her breaths. The pistol still hung from the hilt in her hands. She’d been staring down into the face of Nick. Nick with a bullet hole right between his beautiful yellow eyes.

She’d been shaking before Deacon could reach her. Fell to her knees beside the dead synth still wearing her husband’s face, when he finally did. Deacon crouched down beside his partner. His sister. His friend.

And he held her. Not in the goofy manner they’d become accustomed to. Not in that friendly way that still held humor between them and a joke poised on the tip of the tongue.

He held her like he was afraid she was breaking. He held her like he’d once wished to be held when he had. They sat there a long while like that, together in the still air of the room. Nora remembered she’d felt emptied out then. Like there was nothing left inside her. Like she was just a hollow shell.

But as Deacon held her while she’d looked into the fading eyes of one of the Gen 2’s, she suddenly felt very stupid. Despite her bravado, despite her control, she’d been desperate to see those bright yellow eyes just one more time; just once more since they’d gazed at her as he lay prone against that Corvega, bleeding coolant all over the street.

And in that moment, in that room, as she looked at them, she’d realized they were entirely the wrong color.

Nick’s eyes were _grey._

And she’d desperately wanted to see them again.

She’d kissed Deacon’s cheek for helping her get through it all and found her feet one more time. Together, they opened the door and took to the stairs, intent on finishing her war.

But the war wasn’t over yet. In the present, in the now, here lying on the ground; she could still hear sounds of gunfire.

_Go back. How’d you get here? Follow the clues and the evidence; put your case together!_

Nora struggled to remember what had happened next. 

They’d stepped out onto the rooftop with some foolhardy plan to get Ayo to turn around. Mac was ready. Deacon had shouted something funny at him, something that made her want to laugh. Something about a Giddy’up Buttercup and a new paintjob.

And he’d turned.

And Nora pointed at him.

And Mac had shot.

And there’d been a _ping_.

Glass. The fusion core on his back had been covered with _glass_. Bullet proof glass...like his visor.

Ayo had been furious then. Had raised his rifle, ready to fire. Both Deacon and Nora had drawn their pistols. And then they’d been running from a spray of his bullets. He wasn’t fast enough. He wasn’t good with the gun. He’d been overconfident.

But then he’d had explosives.

Some kind of frag grenades. He’d tossed them like a baby, all around and furious; whining and screaming and cursing at her through that damn suit, never minding that the roof wasn’t stable and the concrete was collapsing. Deacon had gotten hit. She’d seen the grenade fall too close before she could scream, before she could reach him; because the ground beneath her feet had begun to give way.

She’d leaped, falling hard, but not falling through the flooring. As she’d climbed to her knees, Ayo was on top of her. She’d braced for the gunshot. From this range, she doubt even he could miss.

And then there was _Zain_. Out of nowhere, like a flash of light, his yellow hair gleaming as he ran straight into Ayo, knocking him off his feet. They’d tumbled. Ayo’s gun went off. He’d rolled Zain off of him.

He’d rolled Zain off of him.

And there’d been so much _blood_.

Ayo never got to his feet, but Nora was suddenly on hers again. Deacon grabbed her by the elbow and yanked her up, reaching into his postman’s bag full of tricks and tossing something as her pulled her in the other direction to run with him. The only thing Nora could think at the time was to wonder how he was still _walking_.

There was a bright flash behind them and smoke. She felt something sting through her arm as another frag grenade came in wildly behind them and then the world went black.

She wondered where Ayo was _now_.

“B-b-bss?”

With great effort, Nora pulled her hand from the wet, sticky thing and tapped the side of her CLARA. It beeped and reset and suddenly MacCready’s voice came in clear.

“Boss?”

“Mac..,” she breathed.

“Oh thank God!” he sighed heavily in relief through the earbud. “Are you guys okay?!”

“Dunno,” she cringed, trying again to push herself upright. “Think I took a hit.”

“Oh Jesus,” he was breathing hard on the other end. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what happened. I thought I hit him, I was sure I hit him…”

No good. Keep him _calm_.

“You hit him, Mac,” she assured him. “Just give me a second here, okay?”

Christ, her hip hurt. Her hand fluttered to it, brushing against the hard edge of the Jet inhaler she’d landed on. She wanted to laugh. Chems always seemed to leave her damaged and this one was going to gift her one hell of a bruise come midnight. At least it was still in her pocket.

Priorities first.

“Mac, I’m trying to get my bearings. Lost a couple minutes in that blast,” she coughed. “Do you see Ayo anywhere?”

“No,” he answered immediately. “He was twenty-five feet behind you when the flash bang went off. You were running for cover. There’s a shed up there. Are you there?”

Nora turned her head to look towards her feet. She recognized the brick of the the little shack where the stairwell let out. 

That’s right. Deacon had been pulling her behind it when that last frag went off.

Deacon.

Oh...the snack cakes and dirt.

Her head whipped around so fast it left her dizzy, but the mentats were still in her system and the bloom of wet, red blood against his white t-shirt came into immediate focus.

“Oh, God,” she breathed, her fist still gripped the cotton of his shirt. “Deacon…”

He lay on his back, skin mottled with cuts. There was a deep burn in one leg and a patch of red with a small hole in the jeans of his other thigh. His sunglasses had cracked and some of the mirrored glass was missing.

And there was a bullet hole right under his ribs and bleeding.

Her hand was covered in blood. His blood. She’d been trying to put pressure on the wound and passed out again. She put her ear to his chest in sudden desperation. His heart was still there, still beating; but it was slow and his breaths were shallow.

Jesus. She needed to work fast.

Clenching her teeth, Nora dragged herself up to her knees, her lungs emptying in a loud huff with the strain. She wiped her bloody hand on her jeans to clean the slick wetness off it and dove into her own postman’s bag, emptying the contents on the ground.

“Mac, you still there?”

“Yes, I’m here. Talk to me,” he breathed.

“Listen to me,” she bit back a groan feeling the sharp sting of the shrapnel in her left arm now. “I need you to tell me if Ayo gets up. Where he is, where he’s going.”

“I gotcha,” he responded quickly.

Nora fished through the small pile of items before her, knocking ammo, plasma grenades and her tube of Wonderglue out of the way, before grabbing a stimpak. She uncapped it with her teeth, and reached for the edge of Deacon’s t-shirt.

Gingerly, she pulled the wet cotton from the wound, horrified by the small overflow of blood that gushed from the hole with his every breath. She stuck the stimpak in above the entry point, before grabbing another and shoving it beneath. She watched the skin begin to close and the blood as it stopped flowing.

“Get Haylen on the line for me,” she whispered, still working; Deacon was a mess and she used every stim in her kit to keep his heart kicking. 

There was a click.

“Ma’am?” She heard Scribe Haylen’s voice now in her ear.

“Haylen, tell me what you know about bulletproof glass,” Nora asked, her breath rapid as she slid the last stim into Deacon’s scalp to stop the swell and bleeding from somewhere at the back of his skull. 

“Bulletproof glass?”

“Like in the visor of a power suit,” Nora hissed, her arm screaming at her as she ministered to Deacon’s injuries. “You can’t shoot a guy through the helmet. Not with the armor and the glass. He’s got the same glass over the fusion core. I think.”

“Son of a..,” she heard MacCready’s voice now. “So I did hit it!”

Leave it to Mac to worry about missing a shot. The kid never missed.

“Oh, oh, ok,” Haylen sounded nervous. Like she was thinking and understood what Nora needed from her. “Ok, ok, the uh...the glass is meant for high impact. It, it protects the soldier from snipers, so you can’t shoot it from a distance, it just stops the bullet.”

“Could I beat it in? With a crowbar?” She asked, looking at her gear for options.

“You wouldn’t be able to get enough leverage and that window sounds small,” Haylen had her conviction back. “You’d need something that could apply a lot of force or heat. Something that could impact the whole area, not a pin-prick like a bullethole. The glass can’t sustain a ton of pressure when it’s not focused in a small area.” 

Nora gave a pained chuckle as she looked at the items from her bag. She had an idea.

“Like a plasma grenade?”

“If...if you could get it to explode right against the glass somehow, yes,” Haylen sounded doubtful. “But you’d have no way to direct the force.”

“Bet you ten caps you’re wrong,” Nora hissed and rolled onto her back, her head resting on Deacon’s bicep. “Mac, you still there?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said quickly. “ And I see Ayo now, he’s up! Oh god, he’s looking for you, I think. What do you wanna do?”

“Something really stupid,” she laughed, though it was a sad attempt with her chest feeling so sharp right now.

Probably broke a couple of ribs in the fall.

“You remember when we were fighting that Barnes guy?” She asked through a groan as she shoved the hand of her shrapnel littered arm into her jeans pocket.

“This isn’t the time to be...yes, yes I do,” MacCready sounded agitated. “Seriously, boss, tell me what you want me to do here. You’ve got about a minute.”

“He’d snuck up on you...right after you’d taken out those guys on the high rise,” she hissed, fingers fumbling for the Jet inhaler now.

“Yeah, and...and by the time I turned, he was too close,” MacCready was stuttering, trying to walk himself back through it. “I couldn’t get the rifle up in time. Couldn’t backpedal fast enough to get a shot…I just needed to get in one shot...”

“You remember how...how I got you a shot?” She pulled the whole damn pocket inside out, finally freeing the inhaler from it’s prison.

“Yeah, you...you, distracted him, got him to turn around for me,” MacCready was nervous and trying to remember. “Comon’, Nora, he’s headed your way!”

“ _How_ did I get you the _shot_ , MacCready?” She smiled. The smoke was back in her voice now, low and soothing.

“You, you ran right up behind him and you--oh! OH!” He was getting it now.

“Do me a favor, Mac...get him to turn around for me. I’ll get you something to shoot at,” she held the Jet to her lips.

“Don’t die on me, boss,” he pleaded. “Not on my watch.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Mac,” she laughed and then inhaled.

Time…

Slowed…

Down…

Nora took a deep breath.

She could feel the air moving around her, like soft waves at the beach, slow and rhythmic. Could almost see the molecules in the breeze and the little dancing patterns they made as they rolled by her; soothing. The soft beat of Deacon’s heart behind her was beautiful. Rhythmic, slow, perfect. It was a reassurance she needed right now. He was alive. He was alive. He was still alive.

And she was too. At least for now.

She could understand now why John had huffed this shit so often. It was like floating in an endless and wonderful dream. She sighed in relief for the feeling, before forcing herself back onto her stomach and reaching for the tube of Wonderglue.

Over the earpiece, she could hear MacCready yelling something to Tom now. Was trying to get him to do something for him, to hook him into something, but what it was, she hardly knew. His words came drawn out and so slow through her mind that they became just another noise in the mix of early summer breezes and gunfire in the distance and the soft steady beat of her brother-in-this-time’s heart.

Her hands left ghostly trails as she worked, and Nora swore she could see her movements long before she made them. The mentats kept her focused and the Jet gave her time, and before long, she’d emptied the whole tube of glue.

From Mac’s point of view, he could see Ayo beginning to advance on Nora’s position. He was walking straight towards the little shack of the rooftop stairwell. With every step closer he took, MacCready’s heart sped up. Time was moving too _fast_ right now. Ayo was moving too fast. In that damn power armor, with that damn glass over the fusion core that MacCready’s bullets just couldn’t break.

The thought crossed his mind that he was going to lose her. 

The first person since Lucy who’d taught him to give a shit. The first person since Lucy who’d given him something to live for, to strive for; the first person since Lucy to see that he still had worth long after he’d left Little Lamplight and who told him he was deserving of a real life and not the shitty shadow of a thing he’d been existing in when he’d had no other options but to join those fucking gunners, because they paid well and because Duncan had been sick and because he couldn’t get through that goodamned hospital to get to the cure on his own because the swarm of ferals there was too thick and he’d been too scared and she...she’d saved him. She’d saved him from _himself_ ; had given him a new life, in a new town, with new friends and a place where his son could live with a dog and a robot butler.

He was going to lose her. On _his_ watch. And all because he couldn’t make the shot.

“Comon’, Tom!” He cried, voice raw and straining, hoping whatever he was hacking into would work.

“Alright, Mac! Got it!” He heard Tom suddenly in his ear. “You’re live!”

He didn’t hesitate. He took a deep breath.

He imagined those blue eyes, the same color Lucy’s good dress had been. He imagined that smile that had saved him.

Echoing around the field, MacCready’s voice boomed from every loudspeaker in the vicinity.

“HEY ASSHOLE!”

Ayo stopped at that and turned around.

“YEAH YOU BIG...YOU BIG DICKHEAD, I’M TALKING TO YOU!”

“Who dares?!” Ayo was right at the edge of the building now, looking over the battlefield for the man who had dared to address him in such a way. 

Ayo was fuming. He’d never been spoken to with such words in all his life; not even as a child, when the other children at the Institute grew scared of him. He was a _genius_ , how many times had Father told him so? A genius who had the world at his fingertips and who had never been constrained by the limitations of lesser men. He refused to let some piece of Commonwealth dog talk to him this way now.

He’d find out who he was, and when the day was over, he’d have the rogue’s tongue pulled and mounted for his wall of trophies.

“Where are you, you little miscreant?! Who are you, to speak to me like that?!” He roared.

MacCready inhaled deeply, apologizing to Duncan in his mind, before unleashing the most foul mouthed string of words he could stick together in one single breathless phrase. He called Justin Ayo every dirty name and pornographic crass word he’d ever picked up since leaving Little Lamplight. It was cathartic, it was brash, it was the exact same sort of distraction Nora had used years ago to piss off Barnes enough to show MacCready his back and give him the distance he’d needed to lift his rifle, when the gunner had gone after Nora.

As he unloaded on Ayo, distantly hearing the mad doctor screaming at him to shut up, he saw her.

_Nora._

She was right there in his scope and running.

Running straight at Ayo’s back with two black objects in her hands, each a little bigger than her fists. MacCready wasn’t sure what she was planning, but as he cussed and cursed and swore up a storm around the doctor’s name, he was already calculating his shot. 

He wasn’t going to lose her.

Not on _his_ watch.

MacCready’s foul words washed over Nora as she ran and if it had been another time, another place, she would have laughed. It was without a doubt the cutest thing she had ever heard for something so crass and obscene. She imagined him now, cheeks glowing bright red, and made a promise to herself not to tease him about it later. She knew how embarrassed he’d be about the whole thing, when he had time to think; MacCready put on a tough exterior, but he was still that rough kid from Little Lamplight, struggling to keep his town together without any adults to rely upon.

Her every footfall felt like an eternity. She was closing in on Ayo’s back as her cheeks began to tingle, the blood therein beginning to pleasantly spark.

Her time was running out. 

She leapt at him, as he raged with his back to her, slamming the two pulse grenades against the impact proof glass over his fusion core. The Wonderglue she’d coated them with on one side stuck fast and she counted as the old television ad jingle sang in her memory.

_“Need a quick stick? Then we’re one you pick! Wo-wo-wo-wo-Wongerglue! Just count to ten, it sticks to anythin’! Wo-wo-wo-wo-Wongerglue!”_

It was the only product Nora had ever purchased in the old world that didn’t exaggerate their claims. Wonderglue had started as some sort of quick military grade adhesive and it absolutely could stick to anything in ten seconds. 

She wished the makers were still alive, just so that she could kiss them for their ingenuity right now.

The seconds crawled by even as the Jet began to fade, but she held fast, pressing the bombs to his back, even as he struggled to turn and find the cause of the tiny impact against his suit. Her feet danced as she stepped with him, a morbid and dangerous waltz, counting their beat in tune to the glue’s adhesive setting time.

_5…_  
_6…_  
_7…_

“What in the..?!” He screeched, rounding his body again.

_8…_  
_9…_  
_10..._

The Jet kick ended just as her countdown did and the world snapped back to full speed. Nora felt her heart racing wildly as she could feel the full force of the adrenalin she’d been riding in come upon her. It was a jarring transition back to the world, but the mentats kept her focused.

She felt a little twinge of sorrow as she thought of John then, and thanked him in her mind for getting her to the exit.

As they passed the edge of the building in their spiraling dance, she planted her foot on the side of the ledge and lifted herself up, before rebounding back, using the concrete there as a springboard. Her hands let go of the grenades and she jumped away from Ayo.

Through MacCready’s scope, he saw Nora spring away and then disappear behind Ayo’s massive armor as he must have seen her escape and turned in that direction. 

It gave MacCready a full view of his back.

And the two pulse grenades she’d stuck over the fusion core.

“Jesus,” he breathed, finger already primed on the trigger. “You’re an angel…”

MacCready inhaled for the shot.

And stopped. 

He looked again through the scope.

Ayo’s back was still towards him, the grenades right there and in range; but something was moving in front of him now. Something was _kicking_ at the height of his waist; flailing hard as it was lifted off the rooftop and into the air, just wild enough that MacCready could see the movement.

And then he saw her _face_ , as Ayo raised her by the throat just high enough that MacCready could see her clearly, over the power suit’s shoulder.

“No, no, no, no,” he cried out. “Nora!”

“You!” Ayo snarled, lifting her straight off her feet, one huge metal gauntlet wrapped around her slender neck.

He’d caught hold of her by the scarf a moment before she’d have been free. He’d been shit with the rifle, but she’d forgotten how fast he could move in the suit. She was just as fast in Tom’s clothing. Luck had been the deciding factor in this battle and hers had just run out.

Nora gagged and kicked, her hands scrabbling for purchase on his gauntlet now to relieve the pressure. The pain in her side was on fire now, ribs surely cracked and broken as he stretched her into the air. The sharp ache of her wounds was indescribable, her left arm a burning, screaming mess from the shrapnel as she no longer moved it with care; but as she cracked one eye open against it all, she realized Ayo had his back to MacCready.

“Mac,” she hissed. “See it?”

“I see it, but..,” he licked his lips, pleased she was still talking. “But you have to get clear first!”

“Who are you talking to?” Ayo looked at her through his visor. Nora could almost see his mealy mouthed expression now. The pursing of his lips “Or have you finally lost your mind after all these years on the surface? I bet your brain could tell some interesting stories once we cut it open.”

“Go to hell,” she cringed, forcing her hand into her jeans pocket.

Come on, where was it?

Where was it?

Oh.

_Oh no._

Danse’s mini EMP wasn’t there. It was gone.

She realized with some finality, that she must have dropped it when she’d fumbled getting the Jet out of her jeans. When she’d pulled the pocket inside out.

She closed her eyes in grief. 

There was nothing left, but to _accept_ it.

No one’s fault. Just bad luck.

You can’t fight a battle without losing people. That’s the cost if you want to win the war.

“You know, now that I have you here,” Ayo purred and pulled her closer to his mask. “I really must ask something, for science you understand.”

She could see him grinning now through the glass. That horrible little smarmy grin, just like in her memories.

“Tell me, Mother,” he cooed. “What did it feel like when that old synth from Diamond City you were fawning over died such a horrible, disemboweled mess on the street, like the trash it was? Did it hurt? Did you love it? I only wish I’d been there to observe your reactions myself.”

Nora snarled.

“Take it, Mac,” she choked out. “Take the shot!”

“I...I can’t!” He sounded horrified. “You’re not clear!”

“Did you mourn it like you’d mourn a real person?” Ayo taunted her. “Did you _copulate_ with it?”

“Mac..,” she hissed, feeling the air being squeezed out of her.

“NO!” He voice hitched in her ear.

“Did you really think it could _love_ you? That it _felt_ things?” Ayo chuckled. “You disgust me, Mother. Consider its death a belated gift for taking the Institute from me. And after I’ve ripped the skin from your bones and left them out for the mongrels of this world, I’ll walk my army across each and every one of your cities just to _spite_ you, starting with the, heh, Great. Green. Jewel.”

He punctuated every syllable of Diamond City’s nickname as if it were anathema.

“I want you to die knowing I’ve taken everything from you, that I _will_ take everything from you, just like you did to me!”

She realized now that this is how Ayo would kill her. He’d crush her throat right here, before the entire army, and throw her corpse away when he was done.

“I’ve waited _so_ long for this moment..,” he panted as he squeezed.

She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

“Mac...please,” She gasped, her words strained and pleading. “... _mercy_.”

Her words struck him hard in the chest.

A memory flared up so strong and so clear in his gut, it made him sick. They’d been at the Castle together. After a laundry list of Preston’s endless requests had been finished.

_“Jesus, Boss,” he shook his head at her._

_Nora was bandaged, bleeding and bruised. She’d taken a real beating on her last mission, running headlong into that raider’s nest like she owned the place._

_“Maybe you should consider taking it easy for a while,” his eyes traced a cut along her forearm, knowing it would leave a scar. “Preston’s got you running ragged. No shame calling mercy if you need a break.”_

_“The day I cry mercy,” she’d laughed at him. “Is the day you can put me out of my misery.”_

_MacCready pointed at her with thumb and forefinger._

_“Bang.”_

“Oh God, God, no,” she could hear him hesitating. Mac was crying now. “Please, no…”

Nora smiled as she felt her vision growing black. She felt bad for making him do this. She’d take the shot right now for him, if she could. It wasn’t a burden she’d ever wanted to put on anyone.

But she knew Mac would take the shot for her. She knew, because they were friends, because she knew he understood her message, because _he_ knew she’d rather die by his hand, than let Ayo have the gratification of ending her life.

The first kiss of the night’s breeze brushed against her cheek.

Her last thought was of grey eyes still waiting for her.

Her last wish was that he’d understand how much she’d _loved_ him someday.

And then she said her silent goodbyes.

 

Her last regret, was that she wouldn’t be able to go stargazing after all.


	23. The Space Between Stars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :3c
> 
> BTWS, I really loved reading all your comments this morning. <3 Hope this chapter makes up for the turmoil of the last.

The shot never came.

In its place; there was a voice.

“ _Hold_ that thought for a sec.”

Deacon’s dulcet tones sounded in both MacCready and Nora’s CLARA units a moment before his Stealth Boy rippled and broke and he appeared right beside Ayo. 

“Deacon! Oh, thank you, thank you!” MacCready sounded elated. “Where were you earlier?!”

“You know me, gotta make a flashy entrance.”

“Y-you!” Ayo startled as the man of mystery appeared. “I shot you, I saw it!”

He reached up, casual as could be, as if he were about to give the power suit a high five, and slammed the mini EMP right onto Ayo’s gauntlet. It _had_ fallen out of Nora’s pocket when she’d taken the Jet; and it had _landed_ right next to Deacon.

The effect was immediate.

Ayo’s shrill scream of pain and panic flooded the air as the hand of his power suit opened too far back when it released it’s grip, and as he grasped his broken fingers and howled, Deacon caught Nora before she hit the ground. Ayo’s grip had left an angry red band around her throat, but she coughed, then choked, then drew in one deep noisy breath. 

“Miss me?” Deacon breathed, feeling her nod, as he slid her arm up over his head and caught her by the waist and together, they started moving. “Sorry, I’m late.”

He ran straight forward with her at his side, knowing they still needed that one shot, and keeping Ayo’s focus where his back would always be towards MacCready. The ground here was unstable from their earlier battle, but if they could make it to the stairwell, they’d be home safe.

It was too far, even as fast as he could run now and Ayo too angry to stay down for long. They’d made it all of seven long steps when Ayo started to advance on them, his first heavy footfall landing hard and ringing behind them as metal scraped concrete. Deacon was prepared to pick her up and make a break for it, when he felt Charmer move.

Deacon registered Nora’s body tensing beside him. With great effort, she raised her arm high.

And then she was pointing wearily. Pointing straight up at the sky.

The crack of MacCready’s gun was immediate.

There was an odd sucking sound.

And then the explosion. 

Deacon was still running as the impact from the blast hit their backs, lifting them off their feet as the roof beneath them began to crumble. His grip on Nora slipped until she fell behind his momentum and they suddenly, they were two people flying through the air and reaching out their hands for one another as they always did.

His fingertips brushed hers. And then her palm. And then her wrist.

Deacon gripped her arm as he landed, hard and heavy, but still strangely on his feet. He brought Nora back down to earth after him, but before he could call them safe, as her foot came in contact with the roof, it gave way. He lost his grip on her a second time and she was falling again, falling away from him, falling towards the atrium three floors down below.

Deacon’s sneaker shifted with a rough grind against the dirt of the rooftop. He dove forward, the white of her eyes visible as the sensation of gravity pulling her down filled her chest. Her hand reached again for his, and he for hers, and he could see those blue eyes begging him not to let her fall just a moment before...

...he caught hold of her.

_Again._

And this time, his hand held fast to hers.

Nora swung hard in a small arc as he stopped her downward momentum and the like a freestanding pendulum, she hung by the connection of her arm to Deacon’s until the swaying slowed down to a stop.

They stayed like that for a breath of a moment, one tiny instant away from certain death, as he hung over the concrete edge of the new hole in the roof and she hung from him like a lifeline.

“I’ve got you, Beautiful,” he grinned at her, his voice a little strained in the effort. His thigh was burning now and he remembered Hancock’s warnings.

“I know,” she smiled up at him, her whole body starting to tremble, and Deacon knew he had to move fast, before her strength and his chems ran out.

“Hold on,” he grunted and pulled himself up his knees.

And then, as if she weighed nothing more than a feather, he stood and pulled Nora back up and onto the roof. 

The force of the pull sent them sprawling backwards and they landed in a graceless heap: Deacon on his back, with Nora half up on his chest. They breathed deep, panting breaths in unison, bone tired and ready to rest. They lay there like that, just taking in air against one another, as the world went deep blue with the dusk and the sounds of battle finally drifted away and stopped.

“Let’s never... _ever_... do that again,” Deacon finally choked out, between gasps for air. "I'm not up...for...these kinda heroics."

“Practice...practice makes perfect,” Nora panted, grinning like an idiot. 

Her head came back to its resting place against his chest. She sighed, just listening and trying to let her body relax, but his heart was going a mile a minute. Far faster than it should be, even after their recent excitement. 

“Hey,” She pressed her ear closer to his sternum. “You ok? You’re not sounding too good in there.”

“Nah, I’m fine,” he held up the hand he hadn’t grabbed her with. “Just working off the high.”

Nora stared. There, strapped to his palm, was a vial of John’s Psycho. And Deacon still had three hits left.

Three out of five.

He’d taken one on the battlefield before the Stealth Boy and one after he’d woken up again on the roof and he had the bleeding hole in the thigh of his jeans to prove it.

“When did you..?” She couldn’t stop her fingers from brushing gently against the small, spiky black writing on his arm.

It was John’s handwriting.

_Psycho--Just like last time, Doc C._  
_Sorry, Sunshine._

“Before the battle,” He replied softly. “Hancock didn’t like that there wasn’t a contingency plan. Said you didn’t have enough chems on you, but he was afraid to give you more this soon after your last round.”

“Still doesn’t explain why _you_ have it,” Nora helped him pull the leather strap off and they set the vial to the side. “You don’t use chems either, Deacon.”

“Yeah, well, first time for everything right. Besides, peer pressure. You do it, I just gotta try it. Quid pro quo and all that,” he grinned at the top of her head. “I told him I’d take ‘em if need be and then we made a contingency plan for our contingency plan.”

“The double Stealth Boys,” she said quietly. His heartbeat was slowing; the Psycho running out.  
“I saw you pass him one when he handed you the chems. Didn’t realize what you guys had done until later.”

“We figured if one of us fell, the other could still get you up here,” Deacon murmured. His voice was wistful; serious. “Just ended up with the long straw this time. I’m sorry it wasn’t him.”

“Don’t say that,” she whispered crawling up and sliding against him until her head was resting on his shoulder and she was tucked under his arm. “I wouldn’t trade on you, Deacon. I wouldn’t trade on either of you.”

Her words struck a chord and he tightened his arm around her as the lay there. He’d never thought of himself on the same level as John with her before. Between Hancock and himself, he’d always assumed that he was the more expendable friend. He’d regretted that moment on the battlefield when he knew John wouldn’t be the one taking her to the roof. But now? There was something different now. Something that made him glad to be up here instead of on the ground. Something that made him feel a tiny bit more worthy that he’d survived.

“You could have been killed doing what you just did,” her voice was low, the smoke of her tones barely a rumble.

“This from the woman who was asking poor Mac to shoot her just a minute ago,” he chuckled, rubbing her arm. “Besides, I owed it to an old friend of mine. Before his lights went out, he asked me to take care of you for him.

Nora’s breath stilled at those words. Her heart gave out a little ache. Deacon had never told her about Nick’s final moments in that other body. No one had.

Figures he’d waste that last breath on her. She’d do the same for him. Pair of hearts, they were.

“Hey, not that I wouldn’t go to bat for my partner anyway! We Death Bunnies gotta stick together, you know? But seriously, didn’t know I’d be in this much pain afterwards. Ouch,” Deacon turned to face her, lightening the mood with an impish smile. The kind that crinkles a person’s eyes. “How come anytime we hang out together, I end up bleeding?”

It was then that Nora finally noticed it. He wasn’t wearing his sunglasses. And after years of keeping Deacon’s company, she finally got a look at the whole picture.

His eyes were _blue_. Just like _hers_.

Just like her _brother’s_ had been.

“It’s because I’m so unlucky,” she smiled up at him, a big bright smile that conveyed her happiness. “I’m the unluckiest woman in the world.”

Deacon knew exactly what she was referring to. He’d made the mistake of calling her lucky once. Lucky, because she didn’t have any family to worry about the Institute going after. Lucky because she didn’t have anyone left to her name. Lucky like him.

But Nora wasn’t lucky at all. She had friends, family, and a hell of a lot of people that she cared about. That she could lose.

She really was the _unluckiest_ woman in the world. 

“Man, you’d think some of my luck would cancel yours out,” he grumbled.

He felt her hand raise to his cheek and he made the mistake of looking at her just then. 

“Maybe some of mine’s rubbing off on you,” she gave him a knowing little smirk.

Christ. This woman. His partner. This little _shit_ was going to ruin him someday. Ruin him because she’d made him care for her with a capital “C”. 

Ruin him, because she’d made him unlucky, too.

He leaned down as she looked at him.

He hesitated.

Then, he whispered a single word into in her ear and Nora’s eyes widened.

It was a _name_.

For a moment, there was only the breeze and the sound of their hearts beating; his still coming off the chems, hers from the adrenalin. And she smiled at him. The kind of smile he needed right now. The kind of smile she used to give her brother when it was just the two of them out on her balcony with the roses going over law briefs and newspaper articles, together.

“Liar,” she whispered, brushing the pad of her thumb over the fine hairs of one of his eyebrows. She’d never had a good look at their color before now. “Next you’ll be telling me you really have red hair.”

He took hold of that hand and kissed it, in that silly, playful way a person does to a child when they’re laughing and happy and family. He held her closer and placed that hand of hers on his chest, and thought if his own little sister had lived, she would have been like Nora. Funny and brave and too smart for her own good. He would have loved that.

“Me? A ginger?” He scoffed, sounding appalled. “No one would ever believe that.”

She laughed, and for a while, they rested there, both in tremendous amounts of pain and exhausted. But as Deacon played with her fingers and Nora took comfort in his warmth, he noticed something.

“Hey,” he said seriously now. “What happened to your ring?”

She held her left hand up, still painted a rusty red wash from Deacon’s chest wound. The silver band she’d kept there was gone.

“I don’t know,” she sighed, defeated. He could tell it was just another loss for her tonight; one of many. “I think it fell off at some point up here. Took a lot of spills today. Probably knocked it right off my hand at some point.”

He glanced around. Lot of rubble to lose such a little thing in. It could be anywhere. 

“Guess I should’ve been living off more than just coffee and cigarettes, huh?” She gave a sad little shrug; humor was lost in the regret of her tone.

“Sorry for that, Charmer,” he kissed her forehead.

“It was an old tradition, anyway. Just a ring,” she shrugged, playing absently with the leather strap around her neck. “Still have this one.”

Like everything else with Nick, the loss of the ring hurt her deeply, but she kept it to herself. For all she knew, she’d spend the rest of her life walking to the gates of Diamond City alone now. At least she still had people who would meet her on the other side. It felt a little less lonely knowing that after everything that had just happened.

And hell, if things really got bad, maybe she and Deacon could start that rock band he’d once joked about. 

Nora looked at Deacon now, sunglass-less and pompadour needing a good wash. She thought Buster might have really liked him and she was glad right now to not be mourning the loss of another brother. She tightened her hold on him for a moment before pulling away.

“Think we should get moving?”

“You sure you’re ready?” He asked honestly. “War’s over. You can take a minute.”

“I’ve had my minute,” she reached over and gave his hand a little squeeze. “Enough to get through the rest of it for now, at least. Thanks for seeing this through with me, Deacon. I really appreciate it.”

He smirked.

_“Anytime.”_

Nora helped him get to his feet; a great effort for both of them after their injuries from that day. They surveyed their kingdom as they stood there. Like everything else in the Commonwealth, it was in ruins.

They made their way first to Zain. Neither Nora, nor Deacon had to turn him over. The massive wound just under his collarbone had probably killed him instantly. Nora knelt beside his body, brushed his bright yellow hair from his face, and gently closed his eyes. It was doubtlessly just a trick of the evening light, but it looked like he’d died smiling.

“Thank you,” she whispered, before taking Deacon’s hand to continue on.

They were almost to the roof stairway access when Nora heard the groan. 

The beautiful sense of calm that she’d found suddenly flushed out of her, and she spun faster than Deacon thought was good for her injuries in the direction of the edge of the roof.

There lay Ayo. His power suit damaged and blood pooling out of him from the armor. His helmet had released and fallen off and there was a gurgling sound in his breath when they approached. Deacon made to step forward, but Nora stopped him, drawing her pistol from her hip holster, and walking on whispering feet the short distance to the man.

He looked so _small_ just then. Smaller than she had ever been. Funny now, that she thought on it, how she’d ever been so afraid of someone so small.

She wondered how he was even still breathing. He looked far less human than any of the ghouls he’d hated so much. The plasma burns had left him looking like the monster he was. A sad, pathetic, little monster.

“Ayo,” she called him flatly.

His chest burbled and then his eyes struggled to focus on her.

“Y-y...y-ou,” he sputtered. “Should...ave kill..d y-you…”

“But you didn’t,” she stated fact.

He let out a horrible grating little breath of a laugh.

“S-still...kill...killed y-your s-s-synth,” he grinned at her, the flesh pulling unnaturally and his mouth full up with blood.

She smiled down at him. It was not a smile she’d ever given anyone before.

“No,” her said; stare hard and cold enough to freeze a man with a glance. “Nick’s not dead.”

She saw the horror in his eyes then. She relished it.

And then she took aim with her pistol and pulled the trigger.

“Just different,” she murmured in the aftermath.

She stood there a long moment, looking at his corpse. Committing it to memory. So she wouldn’t forget what they’d lived through. And then she let her anger go.

He was a small man. He was gone now. They were safe.

“You good?” Deacon asked her.

“I’m surviving,” she nodded and took his offered hand.

Together, they left the rooftop, making their way down the many halls and stairs to count their losses and celebrate that, while a bit broken, the Death Bunnies were still alive.

On their way down the stairs, they passed by the bodies of the Gen 2s that Ayo had tried to make look like Nick. They passed by the countless synth troopers and Gen 1s that were mangled in the halls. They passed by Strong, where he lay under countless synth parts and bodies, the super mutant having finally laid down his mighty hammer under the lucky shot that had caught him at the temple.

Nora stopped to mourn him as she did with Zain. He’d gone to bat for her with his strength and his often overlooked wisdom and he’d single-handedly taken on an entire army for her today. She sat there, stroking his head now and thanking him; hoping he was in whatever type of Heaven he believed in. Strong may have been a super mutant, but he’d drunk deep from the well of human kindness all this time and had never even known it.

“Gonna miss that guy,” Deacon said. And it was the truth.

“Won’t we all,” Nora nodded, taking his hand once more.

They paused in the ruins of the doorway, surveying the destruction of the battlefield. Victory had been hard won. 

“There are so many of them,” she whispered.

Minutemen and synths lay scattered throughout the University courtyard. Some dead, some dying faster than the medics could heal them, and some already on their way to the medical tents. None of the synths were moving though. All of them were done in.

There was no more putting it off. Nora took a deep breath and stepped forward. She counted footsteps straight out from the door, until she came to the spot she was looking for.

The spot where John Hancock had fallen.

She looked at it now. Just looked at it. Before she tenderly knelt down and retrieved his hat.

Beneath the tricorne, lay three stimpaks.

All of them spent.

He’d _tried_ to live for her.

He’d tried to _live_.

“Looks like he kept on fighting,” she noted softly. She thought about that glance he’d given her now. The one that looked like goodbye. 

“Sounds like something he’d do,” Deacon replied. He thought about John’s words as they’d stood together after Nora’s speech and prayed John knew he’d taken them seriously. He’d gotten her out.

“Where do you think they took his body?” She whispered, looking around for any familiar faces on the ground.

“We can ask,” He reassured her. “If you want to.”

“I want to,” she said, placing the tricorne on her head and picking up the spent shot gun from where lay. 

There were so many shell casings in the dirt.

Just kept fighting until the end. John was a survivor like that. Like her.

Deacon walked with her the rest of the way out of the killing field, while Nora took note of the face of every fallen Minuteman they’d walked by. She would remember them. She would remember all of them.

They’d given her the wings she’d needed to fly.

As they came around the corner, however, they encountered a truly beautiful sight. For all the great numbers that lay dead now, a sea of people still remained; alive. There were so many of them left.

“Nora!”

She turned at the sound of her name a moment before MacCready came crashing into her. He’d dropped his beloved rifle to the dirt, as if it meant nothing to him, his arms coming around her at the end of his flight. She hesitated in his mad embrace, not from lack of love, but from lack of contact. It was the first time MacCready had ever hugged her, and he held onto her now for dear life.

Her eyes closed. He was shaking. Mac with the ever steady hands and perfect aim. 

And her arms came up to meet his, as the warmth of his tears slid down her neck. 

“I almost killed you,” he breathed against her skin. “If Deacon hadn’t...Jesus...I almost killed you.”

“But you didn’t,” she murmured, stroking the hair at the nape of his neck. For all they’d fought back in the day, Nick and Robert were more alike than either of them knew. Too much time in their own heads, too big of hearts for their bodies. “I’m right here, Mac. I’m right here.”

“Don’t,” he gasped out. “Don’t do that again.”

“Never,” she agreed. “I promise.”

She’d spend the rest of her life making it up to him if she had to. Knowing that he’d have taken the shot, however, made all the difference in the world to her. Mercy was a gift not to be taken lightly in war. She held him tight in her embrace and let him cry. 

“That was a hell of a shot, Mac” she whispered. “But you missed.”

“Bullshit,” he sniffled. “You point, I shoot, remember?”

“Your aim was a little low,” she chuckled softly, pointing again at the sky.

MacCready looked up. 

“No one can bring down the moon, Boss,” he shook his head and pulled back with a laugh. His eyes were red and watering. “Not even for you.”

Taking off her scarf, Nora dabbed gently at his cheeks.

“You could hit anything if you tried. You never miss,” she grinned and MacCready looked at her in something like awe. Her neck was a mess; Ayo had almost killed her up there. “You’re one in a million, Mac. Thanks for keeping me in your scope.”

“Always, Boss,” he nodded dumbly. “Anytime.”

“Best 250 caps I ever spent,” she winked at him.

“You got me for 200,” his eyes narrowed at her. “And I gave them back.”

“Guess I got the better end of the deal, then,” she shrugged playfully, before throwing an arm around his shoulders and pulling him to join her little group with Deacon. 

“I seriously doubt that, Boss,” her wrapped his arm around her waist and grinned. “I seriously doubt that.”

She did break one promise though.

“You know,” she grinned at him. “Sometimes, you really surprise me, Mac.”

“Oh yeah, why’s that?” He asked.

“I never realized you had such a filthy mouth on you before,” she looked at Deacon in mock horror. 

“Shocking,” Deacon agreed, shaking his head like a disappointed dad.

Mac’s face turned red as a tato, the blush going straight to his ears.

“T-that was...I didn’t..,” he stuttered. “Oh for crying out loud, it was just the one time!”

Nora and Deacon laughed as the trio made their way up to the medical tent, MacCready protesting the whole way.

By the end, Nora would have sworn he couldn’t turn any redder, but when she turned and kissed his forehead, he surprised her once again.

It was cute.

All told, the Minutemen had suffered 375 casualties during the battle and only 135 deaths. It was a remarkably low number to believe after seeing all the bodies on the field. To Nora, however, even one was too many.

“Takes a brave soldier to give up their life for another,” Deegan told her, one arm wrapped around her shoulder and the other still caught up in a sling, as they walked the camp grounds during the afternoon, two nights on. “That’s a sacrifice not everyone’s willing to make. You should understand better than anyone how those 135 might feel. I heard about what you did on that roof.”

“Still wouldn’t have been my first choice if I’d had another,” she shook her head. “Better to live, I think.”

“I don’t disagree, but you can’t save ‘em all,” Deegan patted her shoulder, trying to pull her out of her penseive mood. “Try as you might.”

“I know,” she told him, supporting him as they went. “Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

“That’s the thing I love most about you, kid,” he chuckled that rasping laugh of his. “All these years later, all the titles you’ve accumulated and the wars you’ve won, and you’re still that girl I found on the road trying to get eaten by a Yao Guai. Still that girl who stopped at the asylum to hand an old ghoul her stimpaks when he was bleeding out, before following a known eccentric into some mysterious hell.”

“I don’t like killing people unless I have to,” she repeated his words from so long ago now. “And I don’t like people dying on me, if I can help it.”

They stopped before the medical tents.

“Still the same girl,” he tipped the edge of her tricorne hat with his mottled fingers before hobbling off to meet Doctor Carrington.

Nora stopped before entering, looking back at the bustling camp under the late afternoon sky. All around her, people were eating together and laughing together and helping each other get by. Much as her losses pained her still, Deegan was right. There was still so much to live for, even in the ruins of a once great city, and odd as it was, she was grateful she’d lived long enough to see it all. This Commonwealth would always be worth fighting for and she’d never hesitate to answer its call.

Tomorrow, the greater part of the army would start to disperse and people would begin heading back home to greet their friends and loved ones from settlements great and small. Already, tales of heroism were being told amongst the survivors, Nora’s story most of all. It was the smaller stories she was interested in though. The stories of her friends.

Ronnie Shaw had nearly died after being thrown by the Assaultron, but had been saved by a small contingent of Diamond City recruits that had seen the whole thing from the hill they’d been stationed on near the medical tents. With the medical retrieval teams already overwhelmed, the five kids banded together and leapt into the fray to pull Ronnie back out. Ashley had suffered a back full of burns for her trouble when an Institute rifle shot had missed her center, but caught her with the edge of the beam, and Margot was now sporting a massive scar across one cheek, though Nora thought it made her no less beautiful than she’d ever been.

The fight had cost Ronnie her left arm and a good bit of her dignity, but two evenings on and she was back to the tough old bird act she’d always performed. She’d been placed in the bed next to Deacon for a while as they patched him up and brought him back down off the chems. His incessant habit of calling her Granny had been picked up by the Diamond City Five Cap, as the other soldiers were calling them now, and she snarled and swiped at them with her remaining hand as they each used the nickname when they visited throughout the day.

Much as she yelled at them, Nora knew she’d already put in for their transfer to the Castle with Deegan. Granny apparently wanted her kids closer; horrified that such green troops were anywhere near the field.

Cait got away with a set of broken legs and a great big shiny black eye after Danse had literally fallen head over heels for her. The power armor had left her gravely injured, but she’d been carried out by Glory, who’d found her still alive and lying in the fray. The pair had made for easy friends and while Cait was quickly on the mend thanks to the modern science of stimpaks, she spent her afternoons with Glory and K.L.E.O talking about such feminine subjects as the best way to break a man’s wrist. They invited Nora more than once for their girl talk parties, but she’d declined as she truly had too much to do. She was also hopelessly outmatched in their knowledge of techniques.

Preston had made it out miraculously unscathed and was currently with Piper, who, had not only written her story, but had recorded it for radio broadcasts which were currently on the air. Both Radio Freedom and Diamond City Radio had received the holotapes and though Piper thought the broadcast was delightful, the article she’d written for her paper would apparently change the face of the Commonwealth with her eloquent grace of words. Nora had listened to Piper’s first draft and it was pretty amazing. It reminded her of sitting on her little balcony with the rose garden back before the bombs and listening to her brother, Buster, as he read her early versions of his copy for the morning edition. The photos in Piper’s camera would be a mystery until they returned to Diamond City.

True to his word, MacCready’s Sanctuary Sniper Squad had kept the roofs of the ruins clear from Ayo’s forces. There had been a grand total of five deaths by sniper fire; one of those being Ayo himself, at the receiving end of Mac’s bullet. Nora worried her request of him during the crisis had truly been too much, and she’d apologized putting him through it when they had a moment alone, as Deacon went in for surgery to remove the shrapnel in his back, after she’d used one too many stimpaks to heal him. 

Despite his words to her right after the battle, Mac grew reflective. Then quiet. He told her in no uncertain terms he would have pulled the trigger. Because she’d asked him to and because he understood the desire to end her life at the hands of someone she loved rather than to allow someone she hated to take it. They sat together at the base of a big tree overlooking the river, where MacCready realized the love he’d once hoped for from Nora, wasn’t the kind of love he wanted from her. Knowing she trusted him so completely that she’d literally put her life in his hands had been enough. It made him special.

During the day, he became her constant companion as she made her rounds. MacCready was one of her few uninjured friends, though he’d been pretty taxed on the emotional end of things, after their near death ordeal with Ayo at the end. For a man who’d always shied away from any sort of physical contact with her, he was making up for lost time now. Mac would always be Mac, he’d always have that cocksure grin and enough sarcasm to fill a swimming pool, but he seemed relaxed now when she embraced him and had even started reaching for her hand on occasion when he needed the comfort of a friend’s touch. During breakfast in the mornings he talked about Duncan, and at lunch, they talked about Nick, and he promised he’d bring his son to Diamond City soon for a visit, so they could show the young boy the Great Green Jewel’s famous lights.

MacCready had also made preparations to transport Strong’s body back to Sanctuary for burial, a task he’d handled on his own, which, Nora had been most grateful for. The whole settlement was apparently holding a memorial for him and Deegan had already declared him a war hero of the Minutemen, awarding him their highest honors posthumously.

Zain had already been taken by the members of the CSC. Nora had sat vigil with them after the first night and attended their funeral ceremony. It was very short, but very sweet and when she spoke of the yellow haired man, she praised his courage, his empathy and his humanity. He’d risked his life for her more than once, for his people, and for the Commonwealth, and she wanted the world to know what a fantastic person and hero he had been. As painful as it was, Zain’s death was already helping the synth cause more than Nick and Nora’s marriage had previously. A Gen 3 not only fighting for the Minutemen, but dying to save the Lady of the Commonwealth had been big news and Desdemona relayed that reports of conflicts across the settlements had all but died away.

If he’d known his death had helped bring a true and final peace between humans and synths, Nora was certain Zain would have been proud.

Didn’t make the loss any less of a loss though. Nora would always remember Zain as her only friend in that underground hell. They’d both been survivors and it was lonely knowing he was gone now.

Scribe Haylen had caught Nora in the medical tent that first night, though Nora had already been sitting asleep in her bedside vigil. Nora woke with ten bottlecaps in a little tin by her head and a note from Haylen saying it was the best bet she’d ever lost. They’d shared a beer later that evening and reminisced about better times.

Danse had survived the Courser attack, though his power armor had been severely damaged. Nora had already put in a ham radio call to Sturges on Danse’s behalf, and though he told her it wasn’t necessary, Nora had gifted him her own personal suit of power armor, winning the argument as it was common knowledge Nora would never wear said armor. Danse had accepted it gracefully after that, though she seriously wondered how he’d feel about the color. The Atom Cats weren’t known for their subtle choices in power armor paint jobs.

In truth though, Nora owed Danse more than anyone else on the battlefield, and when Deegan had told her of his bravery; of his defense and of his sacrifices, she’d been touched. Danse had kept moving forward after he’d destroyed the Courser. He’d found Deegan swarmed by synths while Hancock lay dying and he’d single handedly given them the support they needed until the Minutemen’s battle line could move forward. When it was clear enough, he’d picked up both men and carried them out. 

For a man as xenophobic as Danse, going back into the fray to offer his aid to a pair of ghouls was a big step forward. Danse was the reason Deegan had made it out alive and with so few injuries. Danse was the reason Nora hadn’t found John’s body where he’d fallen.

After she’d found him out, she’d walked right up to him as the mechanics were helping him out of his damaged armor and embraced him. He’d been embarrassed at first and then standoffish, but when he’s seen the sincerity in Nora’s expression, he’d softened and told her he’d never let a man suffer on his watch if he could help it. They were so much alike in that way. Nora wasn’t sure if Danse still considered them to be enemies, but she let him know in no uncertain terms that she would always think of him as a friend.

For all the tales of bravery and quick thinking on the field, she paid far more heed to the quiet moments they lived in now. Perhaps, it was because of Nate; how he’d rarely spoken about his time during the war, how he’d focused on how he handled things after. The aftermath of war and what happened to the people therein was always the part that interested Nora. 

Nora’s aftermath was full up during the daytime with visiting friends, talking to strangers who’d fought beside her and starting to figure out what would come next. Her nights...well, Nora spent those in the medical tents. She had been a constant presence there since the war ended and no reassurances from the doctors could keep her out of her chair there. She’d already lost enough.

“How’s that arm holding up?” Carrington’s voice pulled her out of her reverie.

“It’s doing well,” she smiled, rotating it a couple of times for him. “Just a few more scars for the collection.”

“Considering your line of work,” he pulled at her scarf now, examining the angry bruise still around her neck with a watchful eye. “You should think about changing hobbies. Hmm. It’s beginning to heal up nicely. We can start applying more aggressive stimpak treatments in the morning. And the ribs are doing well?”

“Little tender, but nothing I can’t walk off,” She chuckled. “Not so fond of going home all black and blue though.”

“In a few days, you’ll never know it was there,” he laughed. “Until then, think of the stories that will grow out of it. Already the people here are singing your praises. Half of them could hear your conversation with Mr. MacCready through Tom’s broadcast system.”

“Never said P.A.M was hooked up and letting the whole army listen in,” she sighed. 

“Anyway, I won’t keep you,” he waved her off, gesturing into the tent. “He’s in a foul mood today, I warn you.”

“Is it still the chems?” She asked worried.

“May we never have anything to do with them ever again,” he shook his head. “Give me rifle wounds anyday over dealing with chem dosing. See what you can do with him, would you? Don’t know how you cut through all that bull of his.”

“Always a pleasure to help out, Doc,” she tipped the tricorn at him and stepped inside the tent.

Curie and Carrington had outdone themselves, leading the Minutemen medical teams with grace and speed. They’d saved countless lives with their quick thinking and fast hands and she would never be able to pay them back for all they’d done for Nora personally. They made for an odd pair at times, but Nora thought they looked happy together. They certainly worked well together. 

She waved as she went by the patients, close friends or otherwise, stopping to give Curie’s shoulder an affectionate squeeze before she continued on, into the small private room kept for the Railroad in the back. 

Stepping through the flap of the Railroad med-tent, Nora waved at Deacon when his eyes caught hers.

“You sneak me in a little somethin’, somethin’,” he waggled his eyebrows at her.

“Don’t you dare tell Carrington I did this,” she laughed and tossed him a box of snack cakes. “If anyone asks where you got those, tell them it was MacCready.”

“Can do, Boss,” he winked at her and tore into the box.

She gave his foot a squeeze of affection where it wiggled happily under the blankets with the elation brought on by his new prize. She sat on the bed next to his, watching her partner and wondering what it was about the damn snack cakes he loved so much.

The man that had saved her life on that rooftop.

Best agent of the Railroad.

Who currently had a smudge of purple frosting on his cheek.

“Crazy man,” she chuckled.

She felt the bed beneath her shift as they woke him with their antics.

And though he was still groggy, he reached for her.

And her hand immediately found John’s.

“How come he’s the one gettin’ presents here?” He grumbled, though his thumb was already rubbing gentle circles in her palm. 

“Who says I forgot about you?” She smiled, and though it was playful, there was still that edge of disbelieving relief shining in her eyes as well.

She pulled out an inhaler of Jet from her pocket and held it out to him.

“Don’t ever let nobody tell you I don’t love you, Sunshine,” he grinned at her before taking a puff.

“Awww, I’m telling Carrington..,” Deacon sing-songed through a mouthful of snack cakes.

“A little Jet never hurt nobody,” Hancock leaned back into his numerous pillows, before turning back to Nora. “You sleep yet today?”

“Got a few hours early this morning,” she said, entranced by the comforting feeling of his hand in hers as she always was.

“Well, come ‘ere,” he reached for her, pulling her down to lay beside him. “Get a couple more.”

“I’m fine, really,” she yawned and curled into his side, satisfied for the hundredth time since she’d first found him in the medical tent that his heart was still beating. 

“You’re runnin’ yourself stupid. Here,” he put his inhaler to her lips. “Take a breath, relax for a bit.”

Nora rolled her at him and then inhaled.

“You’re giving her drugs again,” Deacon pointed accusingly at Hancock, a snack cake in his fingers. “We all agreed no more drugs.”

“It’s Jet,” Hancock shrugged. “Ain’t gonna do nothin’ bad to her. Besides, think of it as a sleep aid. She needs to sleep and this is gonna aid that.”

“Shh,” Nora sighed peacefully. “Both of you play with your new toys and be quiet for a while. Let me bask in your survival.”

“Smart-ass,” John wrapped his arm around her, knocking the tricorne half over her face “Hey, when you gonna give back my hat?”

“When you get your lazy ass out of this bed,” she murmured back. “We still haven’t gone stargazing yet.”

“Tonight!” Deacon cheered, sputtering out a bit of frosting in the process.

“Tonight,” Nora echoed already warm and half asleep.

John shook his head. Like a damn cat she was.

“Alright,” he shook his head in surrender. “Tonight.”

Nora’s last thought before sleep took her for a few hours was that John’s new eyepatch did suit him as much as he thought it did. Had a kind of King of the Zombie Pirates look now.

Hours later, they lay camped out under the stars.

With a regiment of fifteen Minutemen standing guard less than twenty feet away, per General Deegan’s stern orders.

Though it’d taken quite a bit of trouble to get out there, what with Doctor Carrington blowing more than a few gaskets and Curie scolding them for making the good doctor worry, they’d promised to behave and not go wandering off anywhere and to head back the moment one of them so much as coughed.

It was a little after eleven and Deacon was already softly snoring pressed up behind Nora, his arm over her waist. The three of them had set their sleeping bags set closely side by side, but had ended up hip to hip, all sharing the middle bag and no doubt looking ridiculous to the guards. The comfort of another warm body to touch was imperative right now, though. It was a small comfort; a gentle reminder they’d all made it out in one piece. More or less.

The Commonwealth made for strange bedfellows, especially after a war.

“Ya ain’t gonna hurt me, Sunshine,” John murmured, taking her slender fingers in his ruined hand and placing them over his chest. She’d been avoiding that area while staring at it all evening. “Carrington patched me up just fine. Another night and I’ll be good to get back on the road.”

“Just, hard to believe you had a hole in you right there,” she said softly, emphasizing her point by poking his sternum. “Can’t even see the scar.”

John laughed at that.

“It’s a ghoul thing,” he grinned, musing over the texture of his hand next to hers just then. “‘Nother scar in the mix don’t look any different than the rest and we heal up quick like it never happened. Smooth skin’s too soft. Tends to show the wounds it remembers.”

“I can still see the scar on your shoulder,” she pulled the frill of his shirt out of the way, and true to her word, a long deep cut still was visible, though only to those who knew what they were looking for. It was a match for her own. 

“Maybe my skin don’t wanna forget that one,” he rasped. “Can’t let you be the only one walkin’ around rememberin’ that nightmare. Marks us as a set.”

“A set of what?” She asked absently.

“A set of badass survivors,” he chuckled. “Makes a lotta the other problems seem small after livin’ through shit like that. Like what we just been through, too. Makes you grateful for all the good stuff. Friends, chems, drinkin’, smokes. It’s what makes us good company in a crowd.”

She laughed.

“How do you figure?” 

“We take extra care now,” he rubbed her arm, his mottled fingers tracing the three new shrapnel scars there. “Watch out _extra_ close for the people around us. Cause you and me? We know how much life’s worth livin’ now.”

“You should write a book,” she snorted. “How to live the good life and appreciate shit, by John Hancock.”

“Bestseller, right there,” he laughed. “I’m bein’ serious though. I got Goodneighbor and my people, you, you got Diamond City and Nick. And we look out for those people. We try to do good by ‘em. Somebody has to. We just got more incentive ‘cause we know what the other side looks like.”

“I’m glad we keep surviving, John,” she said quietly. “Truly.”

“You and me both, Sunshine,” he murmured. “Might’ve overdone it with the stimpaks this time, but I’m still here, so it’s all good.”

“You had me worried for a minute there,” she admitted. “Didn’t think you were planning on getting out this time.”

“Yeah, well, a good friend of mine said she wanted this old ghoul to keep livin’,” he looked at her, his black eye a void in the moonlight. “Asked it like a favor. She’s done so much for me, figured I could give it a try.”

“Taking all those stims I left you with a Psycho chaser probably didn’t hurt,” she chuckled wryly, poking a finger through the hole in the thigh of his trousers where the Psycho needle had gone in. “You should let me patch these tomorrow. Already did Deacon’s.” 

“Gotta remember that one,” he laughed. “Hell of a pick up line.”

“I only share my best,” she said smugly. “Use it wisely.”

The breeze picked up, brushing over their skin, and both of them gave a contented sigh. Living in the aftermath was enjoyable like that.

“You know...wasn’t sure if that Stealth Boy would trick the bots, bein’ they were so close and all,” he shrugged thoughtfully. “But they fucked off when they thought I was dead. Let me tell you, stimpakin’ yourself when invisible? Not my preferred method of loadin’ up.”

“I could see how that’d be a problem,” she chuckled. “Still more believable than Danse carrying you out. I never would have expect that. You two hated each other so much back in the day.”

“Told ya,” Hancock grinned. “Just somethin’ special about you, Nora. You change people. Even assholes like Danse. Me? I would have dropped that dick years ago, but you? You kept tryin’. Makes a difference.”

“It’s all we can do, right?” She sounded thoughtful. “Take the good with the bad and just go with it.”

“I feel that. You know, There was a time I thought I could just kick off this world without carin’, but now? Kind of fond of the old life,” his tone was back to a rumbling purr. “Sides, who else ya gonna drink with down at the Third Rail on party nights? Your old man wasn’t so big on it before. Not sure how much that body of his can handle now.”

“Yeah,” she whispered. “Who knows.”

“Hey, none of that now. I’m telling ya,” Hancock was serious as he looked at her. “That guy you’re lookin’ for? He’s still in there. Just dressed up a bit different than he used to be, and that’s gotta be rough. Take it from a guy that knows. You get enough people who knew the old you puttin’ shit on the new you? Just makes you try harder not to be that guy.”

He gave a flippant gesture.

“Trouble is, you can’t help but to be that guy. You can change a face, but the shit you start with tends to stick around. Just gotta build on top of it.”

Nora considered John’s words, and for a moment, she thought back on what she’d told Justin Ayo before he died.

He’s not dead, just _different_.

“I know that look,” Hancock narrowed his good eye at her. “What’s the verdict, your honor?”

“Just thinking,” she frowned. 

“And?”

“And,” she leaned back to stare up at the stars. “I think...I think there’s somewhere I need to go tomorrow. Before I head back to Diamond City.”

“Might be down for a road trip by then,” John shrugged. “How far we talkin’?”

“Twenty minutes from here, maybe less,” she was formulating the idea in her head now; gears turning over thoughts. 

“Well shit, Sunshine, we could go now,” he took his hat from her head and placed it on his own with a grin. “Do some of my best work at night.”

“Don’t we all,” she returned his teasing look before sobering again. “Let’s head out in the morning, though. One more night’s rest won’t kill us and we might need some information from the Pre-war files before we head out.”

“P.A.M. can help you with that,” Deacon said suddenly, against her shoulder.

“I knew you weren’t really sleeping,” she turned and licked his forehead.

“Liar,” Deacon grimaced, rubbing at the wet spot she’d left behind with the back of his hand. “Besides, you can’t leave me here alone. You’re the only one that brings me contraband.”

“One more night it is then,” John agreed, pulling out his inhaler. “Since that’s the case, anyone for a Jet break?”

“Jesus, no more chems,” Deacon rolled onto his back, placing his palms dramatically over his eyes.

“Comon’ Deacon, just this once,” Nora laughed as John took his hit.

“Survivin’ another crisis together,” John passed her the Jet, and gave Deacon his best shit eating grin. “Gotta mark the occasion.”

“Live up the glory days and all that,” Nora pressed the inhaler to her lips and felt the world slow. She turned and held it out to Deacon. “Besides, what happened to I do it, you do it, too?”

Deacon looked at the inhaler for a long moment.

“See? Peer Pressure,” he took it from her and snagged a quick hit. “This is how it starts.”

Nora leaned back with John and Deacon, looking up at the stars above. The Jet was gliding through her system in soft, undulating waves of relaxation and much like the last time, she felt as if she could see the very atoms as they danced in the air.

The stars shone brightly in the midnight sky and they twinkled just a little brighter under the influence of the chems. She wondered where Nick was right now and if he was still under the same sky as she was. A part of her wondered if he’d ever come back to her, or if the distance between them was too far now for one hand to breach.

She still had hope though, even with the loss of her ring. He was still Nick and she was still Nora. Silver bands and memories lost didn’t have to define them from this point on. No point in looking back, just had to keep moving forward. It was the only way they’d ever close the gap.

And, maybe it was the chems talking, or maybe it was just that she hadn’t noticed it before; but from where she lay in the grass beside some of the people she cared most for, the space between stars didn’t seem that far at all.


	24. Holding Company with Green Glass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit shorter one this time!

They left early the next morning, despite Carrington’s protestations.

John had all but flipped the Railroad’s head doctor off as he slid into his newly mended trousers, collected his coat and doffed his hat in Curie’s direction before emerging a free man from the medical tent. Deacon had snuck out the back, a box of snack cakes and Nora’s pair of mirrored sunglasses in hand.

Nora said her farewells; finding MacCready and reminding him as they embraced to visit Diamond City with Duncan, checking on Cait and slipping her a few magazines she’d found in the camp, and shaking hands with Deegan under the promise she’d stop by the castle with her husband sometime for that drink.

They never found her missing ring, lost as it probably was somewhere in all the rubble of the C.I.T roof, but before she left, Deegan handed her something else she’d dropped up there: Her hat. She ran a hand still full up with scrapes and bruises through the dark lengths of her hair, smoothing it back before sliding the Minuteman sigil on her head. As she walked away from the army still sleeping peacefully under her blue and white banners, she left them as she’d arrived; a small woman in a Minuteman’s hat with a pistol at her hip and a pair of white wings painted on her back.

Partings always left her feeling a bit wistful, but the Lady of the Commonwealth wasn’t known for staying anywhere for long, except for Diamond City where a man who lived on Third Street had managed to stake her heart.

They stopped by to visit Tinker Tom and P.A.M for their information needs and the Railroad came through for Nora once again. P.A.M had not only given them a location and a map, but also a very clear address she’d found in the old DMV files. Nora had thanked them profusely for their help, once more thanking Tom for both his CLARA and for her cloth armor, and they headed out in the direction of the waterfront.

They hadn’t gone far before running into Piper and Preston and soon, their group of three turned into a party of five, as Preston won the argument of joining in on account of his good health and extra ammo against their injuries and sparse supplies. Piper came as a bonus with Preston.

The additions made the trip quite enjoyable and, for a moment, Nora found herself reminiscing on old nights spent with her group at the Red Rocket station just outside of Sanctuary. They’d been fighting a long and different war back then and hadn’t been as close as they’d become since, but the camaraderie hadn’t been lost over time; it just evolved.

Not dead, just _different_. Like so many other things in her life.

P.A.M’s directions were spot on and as they came onto the ruins of Monroe street, for a moment, Nora thought her plans might all be in vain. There weren’t many buildings still standing in this area anymore. As they walked around huge chunks of rubble and overturned cars, however, the corner of Monroe and Third brought much more promise. The damage wasn’t as intense at this cross section and the chance of finding the mid-rise they were looking for was high.

Halfway down the block, Nora spotted it. 

The address plaque was weather worn and the apartment building sign but a memory, but there was still painted tile around the faded red wood door and no signs of obvious entry to suggest raiders or gunners might end up in their sights. Ferals, however, were another matter.

After their last experience, Tinker Tom had given them a stack of his snap-and-go glow sticks and after cracking a whole set and distributing them like eager children among the group, Preston raised his rifle and lead the charge inside.

Their preparations had been somewhat wasted in the end. There was only one feral in the building and he’d been dead for quite some time by the lack of stench. A mummified reminder of yet another war. It made Nora think of the speech Nate was supposed to give the night the whole world went to hell.

“War, war never changes..,” she muttered and shook her head as they left the feral’s body where it lay.

The interior of the building had probably been old before the bombs. As they climbed up the stairs to the fifth floor, Nora took note of the iron bars and thick rubbery plastic railing that had once been a tomato red. The tiled floors of the halls were a sea of small hexagonal ceramic pieces in white and black in the old style, like her mother had at her first clinic. Her mother would have said it needed redecorating.

Her father would have called it a classic.

As they took a breather at the top of the staircase for Deacon and Hancock when they’d reached their destination, Nora stood in the patch of sunlight streaming in from the hallway windows. The glass was long since broken out, but there was something about the place, something about the building that still felt nice. Comfortable.

When the Death Bunny Friendly-Friend Jamboree, as Deacon had just named them, was ready, they continued down the dirty blue carpeted hallway to room 507. The door was oak, the numbers on it brass, and in a little placard above the little peephole was a foggy piece of glass still holding the faded name card of the apartment owner.

_N.Valentine_

“Wanna bust it down?” Hancock looked at the heavy wood of the door doubtfully. “Shotgun to the lock’ll get us through.”

“Who are you talking to?” Nora shook her head at him and laughed, reaching into the neckline of her tank and pulling a bobby pin from the small stash she kept attached to her bra strap. 

“Spoilsport,” Hancock shrugged.

Nora stripped the plastic nubs off the ends of the pin with practiced ease, spitting them somewhere down the hall before bending the pin.

She slipped the metal into the brass lock and tripped the pins, cracking the door open before gesturing back to Hancock and showing off her handiwork.

“Ten seconds,” Deacon whistled. “New record.”

“Still shooting for eight,” she shook her head. “Guess I should keep practicing.”

Nora reached for the door handle.

“So,” Piper asked quietly. “What are we looking for in here?”

Nora glanced back over her shoulder at the reporter and smiled.

“ _Everything_ ,” she said as she opened the door.

The old hinges sighed and creaked from disuse as it swung open and Nora was faced with the reality of another man’s life, scattered across the wooden floors of the small apartment. For all their earlier revelry, the group of friends fell quiet as they entered, single file, as if walking back through time.

The big bay window was gone now. The glass shattered and wood frame no doubt part of the mess in the street five stories below. As Nora gingerly walked across the small living room, past the old, dark leather couch covered in dust and the coffee table that still had a mug sitting on it next to a water-ruined hardcover half read by the way it sat open; she stood next to what had surely once been a window seat and looked out over the low lying roofs of the neighboring buildings to the waterfront. 

She imagined it was a good place to sit and watch the world go by, back before the bombs.

To her left, sat a small kitchen, just big enough for one or two people. The dark wood cabinets hung a little crooked these days, and of the two chairs that sat under a small square table in a tiny breakfast nook, only looked like one had ever been used. 

There wasn’t much in the way of decoration, even in the living room. The remains of a radio, a broken record player, and the pot of some long shriveled up fern the most noticeable assets that had once been present. But there were book shelves lining every available wall and what looked to be salvageable hardbacks still resting on them. 

Piper saw her nod in that direction and took it upon herself to sort through the good, the bad, and the unreadable. Preston and Deacon were already exploring the kitchen, and Hancock had taken up Nora’s place by the window. She left the others to salvage what they could from the outer rooms and turned right from the entry door, down a short little hallway and into what used to be Nick’s bedroom. 

Like the others, it was spartan in its furnishings. The bed was large, the frame heavy and wood, but even without the dust, the sheets would have been plain. His quilt had been some shade of brown at one time and the sheets most likely a crisp white. There were two small night stands and a dresser to one side, both in that same dark wood as the kitchen. A green glass shaded desk lamp, like the one at his office, sat on a night stand. There was no other sign of color that had once lived here, however. For some reason, it made her feel a bit sad. 

Nora’s tastes had always run a bit on the eclectic side, even before the mishmash decor Commonwealth living often brought with it. She tried to imagine living in the deep browns and tans of his rooms, with only a green glass desk lamp and a view of the sky out his windows to brighten things up. She wondered now if it’d been a conscious choice. Nick’s office in Diamond City had always been a breath away from matching shadows, but he’d always expressed love for the bright neon pink of his business signs. 

To her right in the bedroom sat two doors. The first led into a neat little bathroom, surprisingly clean save for the dust. The shower and bath certainly didn’t know there’d been a war on, shut up as they’d been all these years. He’d had two towels; one small one for drying hands, and one big enough to wrap around the body. His medicine cabinet behind the mirror was neatly arranged; a comb, razors, aspirin, now long past its due date, and a small tin of men’s hair wax.

Nora frowned and stepped back into the bedroom, opening the closet door. She sighed a little in relief. There was a little bit more of Nick in that tiny room, at least. Looking up, she saw a tooled leather suitcase, in a much lighter brown than the rest of his room. She reached up and removed it, coughing at the dust that fell with it, and set it on the bed.

It was locked.

She reached into her shirt again and pulled out another of her trusty pins. She went through the clockwork routine she always did with them; strip and spit the nubs, bend the metal, click the lock, and the bag sprung open.

Inside, she found a tiny brass key. 

“Safe place for it, at least,” she murmured in amusement.

She attacked the closet after pulling down the brown comforter and laying the case on the much cleaner sheets. An armload of clothing was the first thing to the bed; three suits, six button down shirts and three pairs of unmatched trousers, ranging in color from black to brown to brown. In that order.

She found four ties hanging off a little hook on the back of the closet door, all some variant of black, save for one that was a soft grey-blue. Two pairs of suspenders, a grey woolen scarf for winter, a pair of fine leather black gloves, a leather belt in black and another one in brown and two pairs of pajamas, both finely striped in white and blue. 

When she’d cleared out the clothing, she found two pairs of leather shoes in black and brown at the bottom of the closet and a small cardboard bin of vinyl records, that looked almost as well loved as the books.

She pulled these out as well, setting everything neatly on the bed as she worked, before attacking the dresser and night tables. The dresser yielded everyday things; white undershirts as had been popular to wear back in the day, socks and boxers. The nightstands had a pack of cigarettes, an old lighter that no longer had any fluid, an old softbound copy of _The Nothing Man_ by an author named Thompson and a small photo.

Nora set the other items near the case before retrieving the picture. A pretty blond woman stared back at her, age maybe 27 or 28. She wore a sharp and couture-looking dress like Nora remembered seeing on the wives of some of the big businessmen her father’s practice ran law suits against for the state, and she had on a necklace that would probably still cost a small fortune today. 

She reminded Nora of a girl her brother had gone with, Amelia. She’d been sweet as a cherry, with long blond curls and a look in her eye, as if she was always seeing the world for the first time. Nora had liked Amelia, naive as she’d been sometimes. She’d taken Nora shopping for her first suit skirts for court and had picked out a small wardrobe faster and with more style than Nora would ever had been able to muster.

She turned the photo over. In the corner written in curling big script under a tiny heart, it simply said:

_Jenny._

It was a far cry from the drunken serenades and ridiculous plastic trinkets bought at the candy machine outside the Concord drugstore that Nate had tried to romance her with back in the day. For all she’d known the sweet looking woman in the photo had once been engaged to the detective, Nora suddenly realized she didn’t know very much about her. Or about them.

She’d always been very candid about her relationship with Nate, but Nick, Nick had been more guarded in his affairs. She wondered now with curious interest what the two of them had been like together. Had there been love songs between them? Long walks and passionate embraces? Had they met in some wildly romantic way or had it been an everyday familiarity that grew into something more?

She only knew Nick from her own experiences, but she imagined they were unique in their own way. Her relationship with her first husband had been nothing like her second. Nate had been a goofball from the start, more of an everyday pal you couldn’t help but love,with a quick sense of humor and a playfully sarcastic comment at the ready, than a lover given over to slow dancing and passionate words put to parchment. Nick was aloof at the best of times in public, an amicable man with cool undertones, but each look, each touch, each word had been a window to all the passion that lay barely underneath that smooth exterior.

A breath of fresh air and an evening’s breeze. 

You never love the same way twice. 

Her mother used to say that, back in the day. She’d been married once before, when she was young, before Norm Connolly and his law practice, before Buster and Nora. She’d been a medic in the army and had married a first sergeant who’d been tall and broad shouldered and who’d had an easy-to-live by smile in his photos. He was light where Nora’s father had been dark and big, where her father had been small.

And yet, after her first husband had been killed in action and she’d eventually married her second; Nora’s mother loved them both.

Just differently.

She tried to imagine how Nick must have loved Jenny, how that love had surely been different than their own. She wished she knew... _anything_...about it now, as it might help explain why he’d had such a spartan apartment. It just seemed...odd. There was no sign of her in the closet. No sign of her in the bathroom. If not for the photo, Nora would never have imagined she was standing in the rooms of a man who’d been engaged. It looked more like a bachelor pad.

It looked like he’d been _lonely._

That thought bothered her. She’d known Nick had kept more acquaintances than friends when she’d first met him. He was ridiculously charming even on the worst of his days and the problem wasn’t in starting conversations; he had an arsenal of words always at the ready and he knew how and when to use them. He just kept himself at a distance until people forced their way in past his doors. Like Ellie. Like Nora.

She’d always assumed it was one of his quirks created in the Commonwealth. Something born and bred in the space he knew would always exist between a synth that was living in a synth fearing town. Much as she’d tried to convince him otherwise, Nick always had one eye on what kept him different, and his humility towards his own person had always been available in abundance. She _might_ have even described Nick as being _lonely_ when she’d first met him, now that she thought on him. He’d certainly been someone you thought of as being alone, despite having Ellie with him.

But what if it wasn’t something unique to his Commonwealth self?

God, had he spent his old life keeping people at a similar distance?

She wished she knew now what her older brother had known and thought about the detective back in the day. She knew they’d met on the Eddie Winter case at least once. Buster had never mention Nick by name, but he’d told her he’d had drinks with the leads on the case when he’d shared his information with them from the newspaper. She had an irrational desire now to know what they might have spoken of that night. What they thought of each other. What her brother could tell her now about the man Nick was then.

She had an ache in her chest now and a crushing suspicion he would have said the man looked _lonely_.

Frowning, Nora carefully set the photo in the suitcase, in a little zip pocket where it wouldn’t be bent. She folded all the clothing with care and piled it in the suitcase with the little brass key on the bed.

Even with the shoes, it wasn’t full.

Piper knocked on the door frame and brought her the books that were salvageable. They’d lost twenty-five to the open window and weather, but the rest on the shelves were still in pretty good shape. They stuffed as many as would fit into the suitcase and then the rest into a small duffle bag Deacon had found by the door with a Boston P.D crest emblazoned on the side. 

All together, when they were done, Nick’s old life fit into one medium sized suitcase, a duffle bag full of books and a small cardboard box of records.

Not much by old world thinking, but a treasure trove by Commonwealth standards.

Piper took the small collection of things and piled them by the door as Nora closed up the bathroom and the closet once more, before remaking the bed. It looked like the same brown space she’d seen when she walked in again, minus some of the dust.

Just how he’d left it.

Nora turned to leave the bedroom, before she hesitated in the doorway and went back. Unwinding her red scarf from her neck, she shook it open, folded it once in half, and laid it on the bedspread. It brightened the room considerably next to that little green glass lamp.

With one last look, she left his room and closed the door and went to rejoin the others.

The group of friends gathered around the small coffee table then, taking up the couch, the kitchen chairs and the floor. They ate lunch in Nick’s living room as if it was a regular activity they all engaged in; dropping in on a Sundays to share meals, hanging out on Tuesday evenings to play poker, checking in on Fridays to see if he wanted to step out for a drink.

As they ate, they reminisced about old times and old stories. About lost friends and found friends and humorous moments and all the gunfire that came in between. Eventually the conversation had turned to stories of how they’d all met Nick for the first time, what they’d thought of him, when they’d become friends, and when it came to be Nora’s turn, the one person in the room who they’d all known the story of best; her answer surprised them.

Piper was speechless.

Preston was surprised.

Deacon laughed.

And Hancock grinned.

“You’ve got it now,” John nodded in his rasping approval.

“Not dead, just different,” she agreed.

As the hours of their morning grew into the hours of their afternoon, the group prepared to leave for home. In the oddest of happenings, Deacon had cleaned all the countertops, which in turn had Preston wiping dust off the couches and near-empty bookshelves. Piper looked at them as if they were crazy, but not even five minutes later, she’d started sweeping away some of the rubble when she’d opened a cupboard and found a broom. John and Nora set all the furniture they’d moved back into place and Nora found a penny under one of the cushions, which she pocketed for good luck.

It was a little past two when they were finished, and though they could do nothing for the gaping hole where the bay window had once been, and even though the room looked a little more bare without all Nick’s books; it still looked a bit more like it used to now, or as clean and orderly as the Commonwealth could get.

Nora stood by the window one last time as they checked ammo and sorted their equipment for the departure. She tried to imagine the life that had sat in that window box and watched the world go by and wondered if what he’d really wanted, was to be apart of it.

The view was certainly beautiful from up here.

“Ready to go?” Hancock came up behind her, a hand already at her back.

“Yeah,” she said slowly. “Yeah, I think I am.”

She smiled back at him, just as Piper practically leapt over the couch to look out the window.

“Holy shit, what is that?!” She gasped.

Nora and Hancock looked down as Deacon and Preston moved to join them.

“Wha-wait, you mean you see that, too?” He sounded genuinely surprised, muttering something after about thinking it was the chems.

“Oh my god,” Preston exclaimed.

“Jesus,” Deacon breathed, stepping closer to Nora.

“Told you,” she murmured secretly against his ear.

There, five stories below them in the street, was an albino deathclaw.

“Wha-what is it?” Piper shook her head.

“Marie,” both Deacon and Nora turned to answer in unison.

“Don’t tell me you’ve already named it,” Preston sighed.

“Of course not,” Nora shook her head.

“Yeah, don’t be ridiculous,” Deacon turned his hand flippantly. “She came with the name. It’s the irradiated ghost of my old pet lizard.”

Nora didn’t miss how Deacon had substituted himself for Buster in that story and she brushed his hand affectionately with the edge of her own.

He grinned.

“Well,” Piper sighed, watching as the deathclaw slowly stalked the street, sniffing around every building with caution. “Now what?”

“Guess we’re gonna have to kill it,” Preston said, resigned to a deathclaw fight he hadn’t been been expecting today. “Should have packed more ammo…”

“You can’t kill Marie!” Deacon protested, gesturing to the beast. “She’s one of a kind! A legend! An endangered creature of the ‘Wealth!”

Marie sniffed the air above her, turned, and spotted them. Her roar was deafening even from this high up.

“O-kay, so who wants to go kill Marie?” Deacon raised his hand. 

The others repeated the motion, signing the deathclaw’s execution warrant in total agreement.

“Hell of a story to tell after this one,” Hancock cocked his shotgun.

“If anyone ever believes it,” Nora laughed.

“So, what’s the plan?” Preston asked.

And as they headed out of the apartment, stopping to retrieve the boxes and bags by the entry, they discussed battle tactics and best strategy for close quarters fighting. Preston nixed the idea of using Piper as bait, to which Piper reminded them that Blue was their fastest runner in the group anyway, to which they eventually scrapped that plan and made a new one.

Before they left, Nora turned, took out her bobby pins, and locked the door.

The big bay window was gone and the closets and bookshelves were now empty, but the apartment was a little more than Commonwealth clean again. For a few short hours, the friends had inhabited a space where no friends had ever inhabited before. The second chair from the kitchen had been sat in, and they shared a meal over the coffee table that held nothing but a coffee mug and a book as its residents in all the years it had been there.

The wood was still a dark, deep brown and the walls a light tan and the leather couch still looked out the remainder of the window, dust free as it now was. Nick’s apartment was much as he left it and it was doubtful that anyone would ever take residence within the safety of its walls ever again.

Without the books, it looked a bit lonelier than it had been, devoid of color; quiet and just a little bit sad. It was the definition of empty now: His once safe haven having met its end. It would remain alone now, this little apartment on Third Street and Monroe, for there was no one left to care for it. The bed and the dresser and the leather couch and the kitchen chairs; his things had no one there with them anymore.

But, in Nick’s bedroom, on Nick’s bed; Nora’s red scarf remained lying on the comforter, keeping the glass green lamp company with its presence.


	25. By Any Other Name

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy! : )

It wasn’t that he missed her.

It was just that, the longer she was gone, the less sure he became that she’d ever come home. 

Not that he didn’t have things to keep himself busy with while she was away mind you. There was plenty for him to do and to explore in Diamond City and Ellie had come by to see him everyday like clockwork. They shared a visit, he made her coffee in Nora’s coffee pot and then, with some coaxing, she’d get him to get showered and dressed and they’d head out into the street for a while where she’d been trying to help him get reaquainted with the world. 

And after four days he could get around on his own just fine now. He knew where the traders were, he’d met Solomon, whom Ellie had reassured him was a legitimate pharmaceutical dealer for things like RadX and stimpaks if the need ever arose and he could buy his own smokes now, which was a relief considering how many he seemed to be going through. They’d gone to the butchers where she went over things like the best cuts of meat and what tasted like what, and he’d even managed to cook a pretty mean brahmin steak last night under her watchful guidance. 

He’d visited Fallon’s, the new Fallon’s at least, and checked out their selection of clothing and he’d even met Myrna who had run off screaming when he’d introduced himself, much to the amusement of Ellie. 

He’d had a visit with Pastor Clements, whom Nick found to be a pretty stand up guy and Doctor Sun, whom Nick found to be a real disagreeable guy. He was probably a fine fella at medicine, but his bedside manner left an awful lot to be desired. 

For lunch one of the days, Ellie took him to Takahashi’s and he’d made a sad attempt at a one sided conversation with the old bot, but had enjoyed the damn noodles immensely. He’d stopped by John and Kathy’s for a trim and a shave, which had turned out to be a pretty damn good bargain for 15 caps and he was slowly adjusting to the currency and the soft sound of aluminum jingling in his trench coat pocket. 

Harry had dropped in right after Ellie had gone to bring Travis some of their brahmin steak for dinner on account of him having to man the radio station 24/7 until the war broadcasts ended and the big city guard and Nick had foregone going to the Dugout Inn in favor of listening to some records and drinking a fifth of a bottle of good rye Nick had dug out of the cupboard. Harry told him about all the general goings on with the crime rate in town and Nick thought in another week or so, he might be up to speed enough on Diamond City to begin taking up his trade there again...at least for jobs around town.

Piper’s little sister, Nat, had even dropped in early this morning and they’d played a rousing hand of some new card game she called Caravan. They’d played with her homemade deck of cards rather than the poker deck with pin-ups he’d found up on the rooftop, on account of Caravan having 54 cards instead of the usual 52, and also on the account of Nick not feeling completely comfortable with Piper’s kid sister dealing cards with half naked men and women in suggestive poses on the table.

It was a small stakes game and she’d won five caps off him before he’d managed to play a hand that beat hers and got one of his caps back. It seemed awful complex in the rule department, but Nat assured him it was a legitimate game she’d learned from one of the bigger traders who came in every half a year or so from a place called The Capital Wasteland. She’d let him know the group would be coming around Diamond City’s way again soon and that she’d go with him to buy his own deck when they got there so he could practice when she wasn’t available to play. 

So all in all, Nick was doing just fine on his own, all things considered. He could get around town, he knew most of the people there by name, and he even had a couple pals he could count on for company when things got a little too quiet around the homestead. He had records to listen to, a great collection of records to listen to, if he was being honest, and enough unread books on the shelves to keep him busy for years, so long as he only read one a day and went slow. And he had the rooftop, where he spent the majority of his time in the evenings, sitting in the early summer night breeze and watching the lights turn on and the world go by.

All in all it wasn’t a bad kind of life. He’d never noticed how many hours there were before in a day, when you were on a kind of forced break from your usual job and you didn’t have a standard nine to five weighing you down. And sure, there was a lot of time he spent on his own in the eccentric little house, but even then, there was plenty to fill his days with. He watered the roses, read, and had cleaned the kitchen and the bathroom until they’d sparkled; old world style. And yeah, sometimes it got kind of lonely, especially in the late evenings when Harry was on duty and Ellie was with Travis and he was sitting on the rooftop by himself with a smoke and a drink and his mind wandered back to that first battle broadcast they’d caught off Freedom Radio, when they’d heard the battle had been won before Ellie had shut the damn thing off as they started talking about casualties...but that’s just the way it was. Home Plate was kind of a big place for just one guy, nice as it was, and that much space would make any man a little uncomfortable after a while. It was the kind of place that was designed for two and on occasion maybe, a room full of friends over for dinner. 

And yeah, so it was a little frustrating the whole memory thing had slowed back down to a crawl since she’d left. Every now and then he’d get a little piece of something from the city back, but those moments were getting to be fewer and farther between. And that...that was fine, because he was doing just fine on his own. Like he was. He could get on with life without all the details of who he used to be. He’d adapt. He was adapting. He’d keep adapting.

And life would go back to some kind of semblance of normal.

Which wasn’t to say that nothing new was going on in his scrambled brains these days. The insomnia was all but gone now, difficult as he still found it to sleep. Once he did manage to conk out though, he was pulling a good six hours in, easy. Which would have been great if he’d felt well rested afterwards, but he was getting these damn dreams now. _Vivid_ dreams. The kind that left him hard and wanting and desperate for some unnameable thing hours after waking. 

At first, he’d thought a few of them might have been memories, but they never took place here, in this world, and Nora had never been to his old apartment near the waterfront before the bombs. Hell, they hadn’t even known each other back then, save for that one time he’d seen her at her brother’s funeral.

So they weren’t memories. Just dreams.

But god, were they ever _dreams_.

He’d been the very definition of _ashamed_ of his subconscious after that first night spent sleeping in Nora’s bed, curled up somewhere between the wall and the pillow that still held the scent of her hair. He’d been dreaming of her, he was sure of it; sitting in his big bay window near the waterfront in that not-quite-yellow dress he always imagined her in. She was always sitting there in his dreams; sometimes reading, sometimes smoking, but always looking like she was waiting for somebody.

Turns out, that somebody was _him_.

He’d finally been able to answer her when she’d called out to him this time, and while he couldn’t remember the conversation they’d had while sitting there, he sure as hell remembered her kiss. He’d never experienced anything so passionate in his waking hours, so he had no point of comparison as to whether or not it might feel that _good_ in real life, but he’d awoken the next morning feeling short of breath and thoroughly filled with need. He’d felt so embarrassed and silly about the whole thing, he’d gone right downstairs and had taken a cold shower until his long Johnson had gotten the message and gave the stiff board routine a rest. He’d spent the rest of the day red as a tomato every time he’d caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, and he’d switched out the Jackie Wilson album for something more upbeat, as he found his mind wandering back to that damn dream kiss every time he’d heard the first sway of those violins in Nora’s last song.

He’d spent the day after she left trying to tire himself out with housework and walking and anything other than thinking about how she was doing, after the first reports came in and the whole town was talking words like “victory” in the same breath as ones like “wounded”. He’d had a full three fingers of whiskey and a smoke and went to bed thinking he’d sleep a dreamless sleep like he used to every now and then back before the bombs.

Nick hadn’t been so lucky, however. The damn dream came back with a vengeance and this time she hadn’t been wearing that little not-quite-yellow dress. She’d been all wrapped up in a big quilt, the quilt he remembered being from that Red Rocket Nora had stayed at and said they’d made together. Just like the last night he’d advanced to her position, but when he got there, Jesus, when he got there…

She hadn’t been wearing anything under that blanket except a smattering of freckles over her shoulders and her best birthday suit. He hadn’t even paused, he’d just reached for her and she for him and oh god, the things she’d done to him then with her mouth had been downright scandalous and intimate in such a way, that Nick was sure it’d have made even some of the boys down at the station house blush. He woke up in a sweat just as she’d been swallowing all he had to offer and he’d been so painfully hard and tired and aroused, he’d had his boxers down around his knees and his fist pumping the meat between his thighs before he’d even had time to realize what he was doing. 

He’d come hard and fast and messily, more so than he could ever remember achieving in his old apartment with that photo book under his mattress and a quick tug to relieve the tension. When his heart had eventually stopped racing and his head came back down from Heaven, he’d been appalled by his wild behavior and headed back to the shower to cool his brain off.

He’d made it a point to ask Ellie how they did laundry the very next day, and if she’d found him a little too keen to learn that particular set of domestic skills right then and there without delay, she had the good grace not to say one damn thing about it. Nick thanked god every moment after that for Nora’s refusal to let go of some of her old world habits, and for the ingenuity of a mechanic by the name of Sturges, who was employed with the Minutemen. She had a working stacked washer and dryer combo that she’d spent a year and a half getting back up and running; and after a healthy dash of Abraxo and Sturges’s handiwork, Nick hadn’t had to drop off the stained shorts and sheets with anyone who might question the nature of their origins.

He’d tried to keep himself up late last night after Harry had left, waiting to re-make the bed in the hopes it would force him to keep his eyes open, but he’d been damn tired after all his running around with the wash and he and Harry _had_ polished off a whole fifth of the rye and he’d passed out on the couch before he could stop himself.

Nick wasn’t sure what he’d done to piss off his subconscious, but the dream it’d cooked up for him last night topped them all. The formality of clothing had been done away with completely and he’d crawled over her, naked as the day he was born save for his tie, as she laid back in his bed with the brown comforter, and pulled him closer to her silk-smooth skin, leading him by the length of his only scrap of attire. He’d buried himself in her willingly, riding out the urgent need to keep pumping his hips into hers in a mindless rhythm until she was crying his name to the tune of “faster” and “harder” and “don’t stop”.

He’d come in his trousers before waking, like some kind of lovesick teenager, and he’d had a second round with the washer that morning, while he pumped away at himself desperately under the hot steam of the shower when he began thinking of how humiliating it would have been for Nora to walk in on him like that, only to find it inspired a feeling very _unlike_ humiliation for him instead. 

The dreams were maddening and his behavior was unaccountable. He’d never been the type of guy to fall prey to his baser instincts. Not that he’d never had a thought or two now and then, hell every guy out there probably did. A nice pair of legs was a nice pair of legs and the idea of silk stockings with clip-on garters certainly still got his motor running; he had eyes for Christsake.

He’d had a naughty book or two in his collection and a couple of magazines he wouldn’t want anyone to find lying under the mattress of his bed, but he was the very picture of a gentlemen the rest of the time. His old man had instilled in him from a young age the idea that you had to treat a lady right and he’d never played the cad before. He liked to dream on occasion, back in the day, that he’d been some kind of Casanova, but it was just that, a fantasy; and even at its wildest, his mind had never supplied him with these kind of vivid picture shows before.

And maybe he could even have dealt with that, because honestly, what’s the harm in having a little imagination to yourself now and then, but the longing and the need and the constant ache and morning hardness it was leaving him with were becoming unbearable. There’d been a time where all he’d wanted from Nora was a kiss, just one perfect kiss and he could have died happy and full and satisfied with that single act. But now? Christ almighty, now...she felt like some kind of siren’s call and he wanted to drown in her every depth until he was suffocating from lack of care. She could have him eating out of the palm of her hand just by looking his way and as much as he wanted to tell himself it was wrong, he was desperate to know the feel of her touch, the taste of her skin, the softness of her breasts pressed hard and wanting against his own chest.

God, he _wanted_ her now and no longer in just an innocent, passing way. He wanted to consume her and to be consumed by her and to spend every moment of his life exploring her every precious inch beneath bed sheets.

And knowing now that she’d been his wife made that desperate longing so much worse.

There was something about that idea of her being _his_ and his alone in a very public and sharing-a-name sense that sent him over the moon. She wasn’t just _some_ girl, she was _his_ girl; his to please and to kiss and to love and to tease and, oh god, that thought alone would send him flying again. He wanted to make her his in every way that counted.

They had to have made love before. When he was in that other body and had been the one married to her in another life. Strange as he must have been in that mechanical man suit, he was sure he would have tried to please her. All the evidence pointed to him having slept in that bed upstairs at one time and he couldn’t believe he’d ever be able to just lay there beside her and not want to beg, borrow and plead for her touch. 

He’d been through their drawers and found all his clothing. He’d found some of hers, too, but had quickly shut that dresser back up again and walked away from the temptation he’d felt in that moment when he’d been greeted by a small pile of soft cotton and lace, _too_ small to be anything that she’d worn without something covering it.

Good god, he was in trouble now.

What was he going to do when she came back? When he should have been thinking first and foremost of her safety and instead he’d passed his days here waiting for her return and audaciously needing to know what she looked like when she was naked and wanting and writhing beneath him.

He was in over his head and as the clock on his watch struck seven he went upstairs and made the bed and tromped up to the roof in his shirtsleeves, tie, hat, and trousers to spend the rest of the evening under the coming stars with only his smokes for company.

The breeze up there cooled his skin and he breathed deep and closed his eyes against the setting sun, letting that single peaceful moment wash the tension from him. He left the little trap door to the house open, hoping the tranquility from the outside air might filter through that door and give him a single night’s rest without dreams of a woman who didn’t even know he was there in her house.

He was going mad in this constant state of ravenous thinking. He just needed a breather. A moment away from all the reminders of what and who he wanted, but currently wasn’t there.

Good lord he’d never been so lonely.

But, It wasn’t because he missed her.

It was just that four days had seemed like a lifetime without having her near.

Nick sighed and stepped out onto the roof. He walked over to the little table and chairs and retrieved the pack of cigarettes and lighter he’d left there the night before. He walked among the roses, letting their soft sweet scent surround him in their calming aroma as his lit the tobacco and took one long, much needed drag. 

He exhaled slowly, feeling the smoke curling with languid ease from his lungs and felt a momentary instant of relaxation from the nicotine, before he nearly dropped the cigarette from shock.

He could _see_ her.

_Nora._

He could see her standing there now, at the top of the stairs on her way into the city, with Preston and Piper and five young looking Minutemen in tow. He was so stunned and lost in that moment he’d been yearning for, he watched, frozen to his spot, as she made her way to the dark end of the street to where she disappeared from view and he knew without a doubt the soft click he’d then heard was the silver of her keys pushing into the red door downstairs.

She was back at long last.

And she didn’t know he was home.

“You need anything else, Nora?” Preston asked cordially, handing Nora the suitcase as she slid it inside the door with the box of records and the duffle bag full of books they’d taken from Nick’s old apartment near the waterfront.

“I think I’m good for now,” she smiled and straightened out. “Thank you again for everything today. It was a big help.”

“Nah, come on,” Piper waved her off. “It’s not everyday you get to leave a war zone and walk straight into fight a bright white deathclaw. Think of the stories I’ll be up writing tonight!”

“Can’t wait to read them,” Nora laughed. “Maybe just leave out the part where I fell in that puddle at the end, all right?”

“You’ll be the epitome of grace in the column,” Piper raised her right hand in pledge. “I swear.”

“You have to admit, it _was_ pretty funny though,” Preston shrugged wryly at her.

“Get out of here you two,” Nora laughed, shooing them away. “Go have a drink or something. I’m going to shower and turn in for the night.”

“Not gonna...go see Nick this evening?” Piper asked in a not so casual manner.

Nora looked pained at the thought.

“I’ll head over to the office in the morning,” she shook her head. “Might give me some time to sort out what I’m going to say, in case he’s still in the mood to fight. Not really my shining best right now.”

“Well, you take it easy then, Blue,” Piper hugged her fiercely. “I’m sure everything will work out, either way...and by that I mean, in only _good_ ways! Yeesh.”

“I get you, Piper, don’t worry,” she waved the abashed reporter off.

“Always a pleasure, General,” Preston shook her hand.

“It’s Detective now, Preston,” she socked him lightly in the arm.

“I’ll try to remember that,” he nodded and tipped his hat.

Nora waved goodbye to them as they went, glad once more that the people of her city usually gave her a few days when she got back to town before they rushed her with their excitement and congratulations. Nick had somehow instilled in the citizens the idea of giving her privacy and today, she was especially grateful for that. She shut the door and turned the lock and was so glad to be home that she didn’t even notice she’d left the lights on. Not that it wouldn’t have been the first time she’d forgotten to turn them off before she’d stepped out.

Toeing off her shoes, she tossed her Minuteman hat across to the red couch and made her way over to the record player.

“Huh..,” she frowned as she went to set the needle down and realized it wasn’t Jackie Wilson on the table. She would have sworn she’d been listening to that one last. “Must be losing it.”

Reaching down into her record box, she fished through the titles, looking for something that suited her mood. Stopping at a sleeve with a brilliant yellow cover, Nora smiled and pulled the vinyl, replacing the one that was currently on the table. She turned the power switch and set the needle, taking a deep and contented breath as the brassy horns flared up and crescendoed into a soft drum beat and mellow piano taking over.

“Ah, sing to me Ella,” Nora sighed as she swayed and made her way to the shower with _Moonlight Serenade_ guiding her way.

She doubled back in the direction of the kitchen and set on a pot of quick coffee, suddenly desperate for a cup and pleased to find she’d already left a mug out for herself on the counter before she’d headed out for battle. That done, she sauntered over to the shower and was sure to let the water run this time before stripping out of her gear and stepping into the hot spray. 

It.

Felt.

Heavenly.

It’d been days since Nora had known the pleasure of a hot anything and she delighted in the spray and the steam as she washed the dirt from the road off her skin. She’d been running on little more than adrenalin, nicotine and fear for the last few days and as the tension finally started to drift away in the water now, a little bit of normalcy came back to her.

She took her time cleaning and rinsing her hair and lathering her skin up in spades until she had enough bubbles on her to make a nice coat. She stood there for a long minute when she’d finished with her ablutions and sighed in relief before shutting off the water and toweling herself dry. She grabbed an old t-shirt off the rack she kept there for her hair and wrapped that up, too, before grabbing her toothbrush and leaving the bathroom mirror to unfog for a bit. 

She brushed her teeth in the kitchen sink, finally feeling all the way clean inside and out for the first time in days and filled her mug once the brewer had beeped. The first sip of coffee warmed her bones and made her feel immediately alert again. After running around on mentats and the awful metallic aftertaste they left in their wake, she’d take coffee as her drug of choice from now on. Well, coffee and cigarettes. And a glass of bourbon, maybe, just to wash it all down. It didn’t give her the fog free focus the chems did, but she could live with being a little less sharp in exchange for the warmth and the taste.

Humming along to Miss Ella, Nora finished her coffee, standing there wrapped in her towels before setting the empty mug into the sink and retrieving her toothbrush. She couldn’t help glancing back at the kitchen as she started to walk away.

Man, that looked...cleaner than she’d left it. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen a counter that clean and spotless.

“Jeez, I should go to war more often if Ellie’s gonna clean up like this,” she murmured in wry amusement to herself.

She pulled the t-shirt off of her head and shook out her hair, still damp but more than capable of air drying now that most of the heavy moisture was gone from it. She moved to put her toothbrush back, but as she set it down in the cup holder, she paused.

Now, that was odd.

There was a razor on her sink.

Not that there _couldn’t_ be a razor on her sink, just that _shouldn't_ be one. Nora hadn’t needed a razor in well over 200 years thanks to the pressures of pre-war society and a job that demanded she dress well, usually in skirt suits, all the damn time. She’d finally taken her mother’s helpful suggestion to have the stupid laser hair removal treatments that were all the rage at the time. While she thought it stupid now with all the bullets that left their imprints in her legs, at the time, it had saved her from unsightly bandages under her stockings when she nicked herself in impatience for the arduous task.

Before Nora could contemplate the mystery of the razor any further, however, the mirror caught her attention and she cringed at the sight of herself. There was a still purple small bruise at her forehead and a cement born scrape at her jaw, accompanied by a two inch long horizontal slice on her cheek; scabbed over. It was paper-cut thin, but the damn thing would probably leave a silvery scar under her right eye when it was gone. Ah well, it was years too late for vanity now and at least it would match the cut above her eyebrow; a gift from the world when she’d fallen on the roof. 

She had a plethora of new scars now to her name, or as Nick had angrily reminded her, for her _collection_. That thought made her feel a little less comfortable in her own bones. He was probably used to seeing smooth and markless skin. Nora couldn’t imagine a fashionable girl like Jenny-in-the-Picture being anything less than porcelain perfect. Made for kind of a sad state of affairs if Nora ever tried to compare herself. She was a mess of freckles and war wounds these days. Probably had enough silver in scar tissue on her skin to start a store.

She wasn’t that lawyer worried about nicking her knees with a razor anymore. 

She hoped he wouldn’t be put off by her now. He hadn’t cared before, but Nick-as-he-used-to-be had plenty of his own tattered edges. It was just another thing that had made them such a matched set. A patchwork quilt of old war wounds across two bodies, who’d found beauty in their shared marks.

One thing was for certain, if the scars didn’t do it, the damn bruise at her neck might. God, that thing was _unsightly_. Carrington had been right, in a few days, you’d never even know it was there. His stimpak treatment had taken all the swell out of it, along with the purples and reds that had been blooming therein, but even faded to light browns with a twinge of yellow, you could clearly see the fingers and thumb of the damn gauntlet.

She had a semi-permanent impression of Nick’s ring in her collarbone now, too...which admittedly wasn’t as distasteful to her as Ayo’s handprint.

“You’re a mess, kid,” Nora pointed at herself in the mirror and shook her head, giving her reflection the same pep talk her father used to when she’d had a rough day at the office.

Those days always ended with a pair of bourbons between them though, and good talks about the important things in life.

She ran a comb through her hair and kicked her battle gear into a pile by the washing machine. She’d just won a war, the laundry could sit for a day. She’d deal with that shit later. Tomorrow, when she was fresh.

Tomorrow, when she’d see Nick.

Ella was still singing her love notes and Nora absently joined in as _September Song_ began to play, picking up the brown tooled leather suitcase they’d carried across the river, and bringing it up the stairs to the bedroom. She set it down at the top of the landing, intent on cracking it open and sorting the books out of it into another box before she gave everything to him. First, she’d get dressed and down that bourbon though. She and Ella could sort through the books afterwards; when the mood was right and she worked until she was too tired to worry about if Nick would still be angry with her in the morning.

God, she hoped not. 

Four days now seemed a lifetime without him.

She wasn’t sure what she’d do if he decided to maintain their distance. But he was different now, and she could respect that. In the morning, she’d lay out everything she had between them and leave the decision up to him whether he still wanted it or not.

But for tonight, she’d allow herself to rest. And to hope. 

She gave her cheeks a little slap to stop herself from thinking. Right now, she had Ella and she had bourbon, and a suitcase full of books that needed sorting through. It would be a good distraction after long days of long battles now behind her.

Tossing her towel on the bed, she reached into her drawer for a pair of underwear, sliding them up her hips with a little wiggle before forgoing a damn bra in favor of one of Nick’s old button downs. She grabbed the one off the top of her dresser and immediately dropped it to the floor, clasping her hand over her mouth to keep any noise from escaping.

There, under the shirt, lay his belt and pistol holster.

Oh god. 

He was _there._

Snatching up the old button down, she quickly set it back on top of his things, glancing around and reaching into another drawer for more clothes. She pulled out an old white t-shirt and a pair of short cut off jeans she wore for working around the house. They were beat to hell, but they were on the top of the clothing pile in the drawer and that was all that mattered. She yanked the clothing on in record speed, and dashed back down the stairs. She checked in the sitting room, the kitchen, the bathroom and the laundry. 

No Nick.

Had she been wrong?

Taking the stairs two at a time, she climbed back to the bedroom and gingerly peeked beneath her sleep shirt once more.

Nope. Gun and holster, still there. 

She began to glance around for other signs of him, wondering if perhaps he’d just stepped out, while still perplexed he was there in Home Plate at all; when she saw it, sitting there at the foot of her bed.

His trench coat.

Nora reached for it slowly, hesitating only a moment before letting her fingers sink into its soft material. It wasn’t the well-worn brushed feeling of his old coat; it still felt new and the fibers not yet broken in. She lifted the tan bundle into her arms and hugged it to her chest, dipping her head and pressing her nose against the folds. She inhaled.

It wasn’t the gun oil she’d been used to, but the smoke was still there; mixed with the scent of her soap and the sweet tang of whiskey. She liked it.

Nora set it back on the bed, smoothing out the wrinkles she’d left in it, just as _My Funny Valentine_ started to play down the stairs.

“Ella, you traitor,” she shook her head with a whisper.

Before she could inspect the room further, the scent of an evening breeze brushed over her shoulders lightly and Nora turned to find the roof hatch was open. Didn’t take a detective to figure out where the clues were leading to now. Nora took her time climbing the steps up to the ladder and as her hands hit the rungs, she realized with some nervous amusement that her hands were shaking.

“Keep moving forward,” she reassured herself quietly. “Nothing left behind you. Just have to keep building on top.”

She climbed up and into the little tin-sided mobile house that lead out onto the rooftop. As she stepped through the door and her barefeet hit the old astroturf, she stopped. 

There was Nick. Not even ten feet away and standing there at the other end of her world; with his back to her and hands in his pockets, surrounded by her secret garden on the roof.

Nora took a deep breath against the wash of longing that fell over her.

And called his name.

“Hey, Valentine.”

Nick relished the vibration of bliss that ran up his spine, as the sweet, smoky tones of her love song wrapped its arms around him; caressing him with the words he’d been yearning to hear for days. He closed his eyes and surrendered to the warm shiver that sizzled just under his skin. 

He’d been standing there since she’d come in the front door, and had sincerely thought of making a run for it when he’d heard the record playing and the spray of the shower come on through the open hatch. He imagined he could lock himself in his office for the night and wait her out. But the truth was, he was getting tired of waiting.

She came back to him.

She’d come home.

And she was here.

He’d have to take the gamble now.

Place his heart in her hands and to let her decide his fate once and for all.

“Hope you don’t mind, I let myself in,” he croaked out, ignoring the unsteadiness of his voice in favor of getting words out. “Turns out...I had a key.”

Silence.

His heart was pounding so hard now, it was difficult to think. All the things he’d wanted to say to her these past few days, all the things he wanted to apologize for and ask her; and they were all bleeding together into one big wordless mess now. He had to say _something_. Think.

His tongue felt heavy and thick in his mouth, but he forced it to move, anyway.

“You...you said once that you had the best view in town. Thought I might drop in and see for myself,” he started nervously, his voice dropping low. “Where’d you get the roses? Didn’t think those were around anymore.”

He heard the sound of her hesitation. The slight inhale to start, only to stop again.

“They’re not,” she said after a moment and the knot in Nick’s released just a little at the sweet music in her response. “But...they still had some breeds down in the Institute. After we...well, _after_...they were a gift from Doctor Li. For helping to get her out.”

“Quite a gift,” he tried to chuckle, but found it ran dry. “...always thought there was something special about roses.”

“They’re for my name,” she explained and he could hear the rustle of cloth as she gave a small gesture towards the flowers.

“Your name?” He was so surprised at her odd choice of words he nearly turned full around. He caught himself part way and forced his gaze to the flowers as if considering them.

“Rose,” she said and out of the corner of his eye, he could see her hand clasped and fidgeting around her midsection. “It’s my...it’s my middle name. Hence...the roses.”

He did turn to face her at that.

He couldn’t think of a better name out there for her than that. She was a wild rose growing here in the Commonwealth; perfect, and colorful, and rare.

And god, but as she stood there, blue eyes watching him warily and looking like she was a second away from bolting, he needed another word for her than beautiful. He drank in the sight of her after its absence for so long. Her hair was still a bit damp from the shower and the wind was struggling to play with it. Her long slender arms and legs were on full display, the denim shorts hanging off her hips and the t-shirt so thin it left little to the imagination in the early evening light as the world began to run blue.

She was so goddamned beautiful.

He took a breath to steady himself.

“So...Nora Rose,” he choked out, forcing the hint of a smile. “Got a last name to go with that? Or did you never change it from Connolly?”

“It used to be Connolly,” she shook her head.

“And then?” He took a cautious step towards her.

“Then..,” she followed suit, her bare feet sliding forward a step, as if they were playing at chess. “Then it was Fitzgerald. ...Like Ella.”

He stopped a little over a foot away from her. He could see the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed now, could see the hinted outline of her nipples and the swell of her small breasts from under the thin cotton of her shirt. Her blue eyes stuck in his grey; she waited.

Nick swallowed hard to wet his tongue.

“And now?” He barely breathed. “What is it now?”

She licked her lips nervously.

“ _Valentine_ ,” she said softly. “It’s Valentine.”

Nick closed his eyes and dipped his head on an exhale. Good god, it was one thing to hear other people say it, to say it himself in his head, but hearing it from _her_...from her own lips, he thought his heart might burst.

“I..,” the smoke in her voice sounded shaky at best now. “I wanted to tell you sooner, but Amari said,..I...I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, Nick.”

“You don’t ever have to apologize to me, Doll,” he breathed out. The same words to her he’d once said in the middle of the night at HQ. “I know it’s not been…that _I’ve_ been…”

He grimaced. Jesus, just _say_ it. Just play the numbers this one time and _say it._

“Nick..,” she closed the distance between them and suddenly she was in reach.

“I’m in love with you,” his voice hitched as he met her eyes again. “Did you know that?”

He bit his lip right after the words had finally tumbled free. It hurt in the same moment it brought relief. He’d just given her all the ammunition she’d ever need to kill him. One step back was all it would take and he’d keep his distance forever.

All she had to do was pull away now.

But she reached for him instead.

“And if I love you back?” She murmured, her fingertips brushing against his wrist and urging the hand in that pocket to slide free. “Because I do love you back, you know. I’ve _always_ loved you back.”

Nick felt lightheaded at her words and even as he tried to keep his hand still, it betrayed him. He felt it drifted out of the safety of his pocket, a jerk and a short hesitation, before it slid tentatively into hers.

The feeling of her skin was electric. It shocked him.

“No, Nora...I mean,” he was fighting to get the words past that damn lump in his throat again now. “I mean, _I_ love you. Not the...not the guy that stood with you in the rain...not the guy you married.”

He swallowed and there was sorrow in his storm grey gaze now.

“I, I mean _me_ ,” he murmured. “The guy you don’t know...the guy they pulled outta the freezer. ...I love you.”

Her hand let go of his and reached up to brush by his jaw. He leaned into her touch and his eyes closed against the wave of pleasure that one small action brought him through the aching pain. His hand followed hers, pressing it to his skin and holding it there. He needing something to ground him right now.

“You don’t think I could love that guy?’ She said gently. “That I don’t _already_ love that guy?”

“How could you?” His voice was barely a breath now. “He can’t even remember how you first met.”

“I don’t believe that,” she smiled up at him. “You _know_ how we met Nick.”

“I know what you’ve _told_ me,” he said miserably. “Standing there in the rain under the stars. But I can’t remember it, Nora, I can’t even…”

“No,” she shook her head, keeping her tone soothing. “That’s not the _first_ time we met, Nick.”

“W-what?” He opened his eyes at that. They were glassy and wet. He’d expected rejection. “I don’t…”

“Sure you do,” she nodded slowly, holding his gaze. “You do, because your whole team was there. I know because my father was friends with Captain Widmark’s father and he said the whole operation had shown up to show their support.”

Nora gave him a sad little smile. The one that always seemed to be breaking his heart.

“It wasn’t a happy time, but you and I?” She said quietly. “We met at my brother’s funeral.”

Nick felt like the air had been sucked out of his lungs.

“What..,” he said softly.

“A month after he’d written that article on the monorail and the mob and he’d come to the department about the tape Eddie Winter had sent him,” she continued. “We held the wake at my father’s house in Back Bay. His place was an old brownstone…”

“Off Newbury,” Nick murmured, the memory of the event coming back to him. “Newbury and Fairfield Street.”

“That’s right,” her tone encouraging. “It was kind of a ritzy neighborhood…”

“One of those neighborhoods with small streets and no garages. I had to park on the avenue four blocks down,” he nodded, choking on a laugh. “I was late on account of getting lost in that city park.”

“How’d you know which house was mine?” Her thumb was gently brushing over his jaw now.

“There was..,” Nick’s brows furrowed, the fuzz of the memory and the slight blur to his current vision taxing his mind. “There was some kind of a tree. A big purple tree. That’s how we knew to find the place. It stood out.”

“We had a big wisteria tree in the front of the house,” she nodded, encouraging him. 

“And roses,” he looked at her. “God, I remember thinking that as I was going in the front door. I’d never seen so many big roses. And you...you weren’t wearing black.”

That one surprised Nora. She felt her breath go shallow.

“No, I wasn’t,” she breathed softly in awe. “I was wearing a cream-colored dress my brother bought me...we’d seen it in a window together after he’d made his first paycheck. It had little pink roses on the print.”

“Y-you,” he was shaking his head in disbelief now. Harry’s description of her that night they’d talked at the bar was now fresh in his mind. “You still have that dress don’t you.” 

“I do,” she laughed, even as she was close to tears. “Codsworth saved it for me back in Sanctuary. Found it hanging and pressed in the closet, when I stumbled out of that Vault; like the war had never happened. It was one of the only things left I could still recognize as mine. The only thing I had left from that life.”

He could picture it now. He really could.

God, Nick couldn’t remember their wedding, couldn’t remember her in the Commonwealth, but he sure as hell remembered that _dress_. The only spot of sunlight in a sea of black and grey.

He remembered seeing Nora at that house somewhere near Newbury and Fairfield street out in Back Bay. He remembered taking her hand in his and giving her his condolences and meaning it; because her brother had been a swell guy who’d sat with him in a bar one night and been one of the only people in the city that had talked to Nick like he wasn’t just another shadow on the wall. 

He could remember now...Buster talking about his little sister...he’d brought it up because they’d been talking about books and he’d mentioned a book that Nick should read. A book he should read because it was _his_ kind of genre, and because it was good, and because Nick was still new in town, and Buster thought he’d get a kick out of it.

Said he’d given a copy to his sister. That they could probably start their own book club between them from the sounds of Nick’s reading habits when he compared them to hers.

Nick gave a short dry huff of a laugh.

All this _time_ he’d been desperate to remember being that other Nick, that other him in the synth body with the torn coat and the tattered skin. He wanted to _remember_ , because that guy knew everything; he had all those important _firsts_...how they met, how they kissed...how she’d become his wife...but this...this…

“We didn’t meet that night in the rain,” he breathed in realization. “We met in that big house under a wisteria tree and a rose garden, just off Newbury and Fairfield Street.”

It was then that something clicked for Nora. Maybe it’d been his expression just then, or maybe it’d just been sparked by their shared reminiscing, but whatever it was that caused it...

...Nora realized in that moment she remembered meeting Nick.

“You...asked me about a book,” she shook her head in exasperation. “Oh my god! You asked me about _Looking Backward_!”

“Your brother had given you a copy,” he laughed with her now. “Because…”

“...I’d just gotten home from a trip and told him how much I’d missed the city,” she could see it now. Buster picking her up at the airport. “And he said he had just the book for me, because...

“...it was set in Boston,” they both finished in unison.

“Jesus,” he exhaled, feeling a bit shaky and excited. “I _do_ remember the first time we met.”

“And I remember that man who asked me about a book and told me my brother had been a swell guy,” she shook her head amused. “Probably the only man in the room that sounded like he’d actually known him.”

“I liked your brother,” he told her in earnest. “Wish I’d known at the time how much I’d like you, too.”

“Like I said, it wasn’t a happy time,” she sighed a bit raggedly as something like peace settled in. “But it is how we met.”

“People meet like that everyday,” he concluded, beguiled now by their beginning. A chance meeting like something out of a book. “Might not even realize at the time who they’re really looking at, till fate brings ‘em together again. Seems we had to wait 200 years for ours.”

“Just took a while to find each other again,” she said softly. “A long while. Give or take a few bumps along on the way.”

Nick looked at her then. Really looked. And it was as if seeing her for the first time all over again. His hand rose to cup her cheek, gently sliding down the silk-soft side of her throat.

“Looks like you might’ve taken a few more bumps recently,” he looked down at the bruises marring her skin through half-lidded eyes, finding it difficult to breath with her so near. “That hurt?”

“Not anymore,” she shook her head and gave a shy shrug. “Might be down a couple more lives though.”

“How many you got left?” He whispered.

“Dunno,” she breathed. “At least one. Why? Think you want it?”

His breath hitched.

“I want it,” he murmured.

“Then it’s yours,” she leaned forward. “It’s _always_ been yours.”

She pulled Nick gently towards her with one hand wrapped around his tie and the other flexing fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. Nick slid his hand around the smooth column of her throat, his fingers diving deeper through her hair and his other hand sliding around her hip, shaking as it begged her closer.

He could feel the tingle of her warm breath against his skin, could feel the slight tilt of her chin as she rose up on her feet to meet him halfway, and that first hesitant touch of her lips so close to his own now and so soft; like he’d imagined an angel would have to be.

She kissed him.

And his heart forgot to beat.

This kiss was soft and sweet. A feather-light wisp of a thing done with care, that lingered for more than a breath, before it broke. It was the kind of kiss that started lives, that marked farewells, that greeted you in the morning when you were still half-asleep and dreaming. It was a kind of kiss he’d never known. The kind of kiss he’d always wanted. The kind of kiss that Nora was giving to him now.

Like he was perfect and worthy and good enough as he was.

She broke the kiss and Nick felt the soft pull of her lips as they left his, like his hadn’t been quite willing to let hers go. He wanted to tell her she was some kind of beautiful and that he’d be hers as long as she’d have him and that he’d loved her from the first moment he’d heard her name, but he’d made the mistake of looking at her.

And that look in her eyes just about broke him.

It looked a lot like _love_.

She _loved_ him.

 _Him_.

“God, I missed you,” he murmured and pulled her back to him.

And this time when their lips met it wasn’t soft and gentle. It wasn’t polite or proper. It was hot and wet and desperate and her hands reached up around his jaw, palms urging him closer as she curled up into his embrace. He held her like she was every kind of wonderful, clinging so fucking tightly to her now he couldn’t let go, even as he feared she would break under the strain of his need to get closer, regardless of the fact that there was no room left between them for a breath.

His lips brushed hers over and over again and then he felt the wet velvet of her tongue drag against his mouth and he parted his lips for her, and oh, oh god, she was...her tongue was…

The sound that escaped Nick’s throat in that moment was foreign to his ears, a guttural noise stretched somewhere between a groan and a keening whine. She pressed her tongue to his again and he couldn’t stop the moans trying to escape from his chest through his voice, belying all the heartache and longing he’d been holding onto for a month and 200 years, just dreaming of the girl he’d wanted in his bay window.

They parted finally on account of needing air, but desperate to still breathe each other in. He kept her pressed against his chest where he could feel the excitement laden beats of her heart against his own and pressed his forehead to hers as they basked in each other’s presence through the heady cloud of euphoria that kiss had brought.

“You’re beautiful, you know that?” He breathed, already craving the temptation of touching her lips to his own again.

“I’m also your wife, Nick,” she murmured against him. “Sure you’re ok with that?”

“God, _yes_ ,” he groaned and he was kissing her again.

He was _kissing_ his wife.

He was kissing _his_ wife.

Oh god, she was his _wife_.

“ _Nora_ —,” he gasped “Please...be _mine_ …”

The words he’d been dying to ask her ever since the day they’d found each other in HQ. The words he’d wanted to cry at her feet as they’d sat on those steps at the Old North Church and had been breathing all his smoke from her lungs. The words he’d he’d been too scared to ask for fear his heartache would always be one-sided when he was living in the shadow of another man’s life and wishing for his own. 

He’d finally gotten them out.

“I’m yours, Nick,” she swallowed down his delighted groan. “I’m _yours_.”

For as long as he could remember, there’d always been this feeling in his chest that part of him was somehow broken. Part of him was somehow put together wrong. 

But for the first time in his life, as he held her in his arms, their lips meeting kiss for kiss, he thought that he might not be so broken after all. That he’d just found happiness.

He’d spent his whole damn life bottling pieces of himself up; keeping them tucked away.

But when he felt her hips shift against his, Nick finally came _undone_.


	26. Under the Rain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wellllll, I'm just going to change that tag at the top now...

He kissed her.

He kissed her on that rooftop full of roses as the world turned blue and the early night stars began to peek out of the sky.

He kissed her until it started to rain.

The first big droplet hit him square in the cheek, the cold water sobering against the heat flaring up in his skin. He swallowed her gasp as a droplet kissed her forehead and they broke apart, dazed and thoroughly wanting. 

The sky broke just as they smiled at one another, in equal parts shy and aroused, and it cooled off his head enough to form a thought.

“Well, would you look at that,” Nick murmured. “Standing under the stars...”

“Together in the rain,” Nora shook her head.

The euphoria of the kiss and the moment left them laughing in each other’s arms; her forehead pressed to his now damp shirt shoulder, and his nose buried in the soap scent of her clean hair. He could feel her pulse racing, the thundering beat of her heart against his own, and was finally content in the understanding of what that might feel like.

Lightening cracked somewhere in the distance. 

And yet they stood there.

“Should we..,” he licked his lips, trying not to think about what he was asking. “Should we move this little soiree inside?”

“Probably,” she chuckled against his chest. “Before we’re both soaked through.”

They moved with great hesitation. The kind of hesitation new lovers are always cursed with when not pressed up against their partner. The kind of hesitation filled with the need for just one more kiss, just one more touch, just one more word, before parting.

“Come on,” Nora found the strength first, and pulled back from him, leading him towards the little tin-sided mobile home that lead into their house. “It’s starting to get cold.”

“Tend to run a little hot myself,” he said with a shy, but teasing smile. “Might be able to do a fair impression of a space heater if I tried.”

She stopped three steps from the door, turned around and kissed him with such force, Nick barely had time to get his arms around her again. It was a kiss he couldn’t understand, but one that still meant the world to him. Hell, they’d never make it through the door at this rate.

“You don’t give yourself enough credit,” she said playfully as she pulled away again. “I bet that impression of yours is _amazing_.”

“Guess, ah, guess we’ll have to find out,” he chuckled, his words a nervous stammer.

Nora felt a tug in her heart so deep and so hard, it almost did her in just then.

He was _blushing_.

She could _see_ him blushing.

“Bashful mode,” she laughed, and though he didn’t understand it, she seemed pleased.

She moved to turn back to their path, but found Nick kept her against him. Before she could question it, he’d scooped her up in his arms and carried her the last three steps, ducking to maneuver them through the door. For a moment, he looked like the kind of man who’d finally found gold in his pan. She beamed at him.

“Sorry,” he looked abashed. “Old tradition.”

“You don’t have to apologize to me, Nick,” she brushed his cheek. “Not ever.”

Somehow, they made it down that damn ladder and he pulled the hatch shut behind him just as the wind picked up. The sound of the rain pattering on the roof and Ella Fitzgerald crooning softly from the player downstairs was calming in the pleasant warmth of the rooms. Nick followed her down the short set of stairs to the loft bedroom, watching as she reached for the towel that lay near his trench coat. She rubbed it through her hair, leaving it hanging around her neck as she turned to him.

“Here,” she reached up with an edge, gently stroking the droplets still clinging to his cheek. He’d seen her do the same damn thing with Piper once at HQ when the raindrops had been tears of joy. He was still amazed at the gentleness in which she acted. “Looks like your hat’s soaked through.”

“Lotta fond memories in this hat,” he reached up, removing the damp and faded wool from his head. “Think I might’ve found my favorite, though.”

“Charmer,” she chuckled softly.

“Thought that was your name,” he winked, as he set it on the metal bulb of the headboard to dry. 

“Careful, detective” She hummed thoughtfully. “Flattery will get you everywhere.” 

“Got a, ah, destination in mind?” He asked nervously, his lip pulling up into something like a grin.

“I might have a few ideas,” she responded, and the smoke in her tone left no question as to what those ideas of hers could be.

Nick felt the excited fluttering in his stomach go south and any clever words he had left fled the room. 

Standing here with her next to the bed, as she helped dry his cheek, he suddenly felt painfully shy to be in her presence. He was desperate to look anywhere but at her right now, and as the towel edge slid down the side of his neck, Nick’s eyes caught the familiar leather suitcase on the landing.

He gave a short laugh of astonishment.

“That’s funny,” he shook his head. “I used to have a suitcase just like that.”

“It’s yours,” she informed him softly, pulling the towel back to rest against her. He looked at her in confusion now. “I...I stopped by your old place. The one on Monroe and Third.”

Nora clung to the towel tightly for want of something to do with her hands. Nick just stared at her in bewilderment.

“I was in the neighborhood,” she gestured shyly at the case. “After the battle. Figured it couldn’t hurt to check. See what might be left. The..the window isn’t there anymore, and some of the books were ruined...but I brought everything I could salvage.”

She was the one getting nervous now. 

“There’s another bag and a box of records downstairs,” she admitted quietly.

He was breathing so softly as he looked at her now, she thought for a moment he might be angry.

“You,” he said quietly. It wasn’t anger. “You really did that?”

“I wanted you to have something. Something from your old life,” she started, the smoke in her voice low and wistful. “I’ve been here awhile now, in the Commonwealth. But I remember what it was like. Waking up. I remember what it felt like to not have anything familiar anymore...to not have something that I knew.”

Tentatively, she reached out, her hand brushing his until his fingers slid around hers.

“I don’t want you to feel like you have to be anyone but you,” she told him in earnest. “Not for me. Not for anybody. If the memories don’t come back, I won’t love you any less. We’ll just make new ones.”

Nick didn’t know what to say. He held her hand in his and gently pulled her into his arms, holding onto her for all he was worth.

“You..,” he breathed into her hair, trying to force down the well rising up in his chest. “You’re some kind of angel, you know that?”

He kissed her then. A real kiss. One that was long and slow and full up with every last bit of passion he had for her. The kind that ended movies. The kind that left no questions about what it meant to be in love.

“I don’t know what I did to deserve you,” he breathed against her lips. “But god, do I ever want to stick around to find out.”

“Were you planning on going somewhere tonight?” She murmured playfully against his ear, reveling in the way his body shuddered, as her lips tasted the soft skin of his earlobe.

“Not if,” he swallowed hard, fighting for words in the thrill she was sending through his nerves with her ministrations. “Not if you give me a reason to stay in.”

“Sounds like a challenge, Detective” she noted impishly, nipping at the edge of his jaw. “I accept the case.”

Nick’s palms slid down to her hips and fixed there as he shook violently in her arms. He was overwhelmed in the wash of longing and the sensation of her tiny sweet kisses to his adam’s apple. He felt her hands sweeping along his arms and sliding up his shirt to the line of buttons there. She popped the first two with slow, nimble motions, pressing her tongue to the dip in his clavicle while she worked.

She was halfway down the line when the tension he’d been holding started to unravel. This was not something he wanted to say to her. To anyone. Ever. But as another button popped free, exposing more of his thin undershirt, the shiver up his spine bled into something like nervous fear, and words began falling out.

“I-it’s, ah,” he choked out, his tone unsteady and breath hitched. “I-it’s been awhile.”

“We can take it slow,” she chuckled softly against him, freeing another button for her pleasure. “You’re not the first in the over 200 club.”

He was shivering straight through to his bones as she made good on her word, slipping the next button out with languid abandon.

“M-might be a little longer that that,” he shuddered, his hands on her hips bruising with the pressure of trying to keep his knees from quaking.

“How much longer?” She teased, hot, wet kisses landing just above the collar of his undershirt.

She felt him stiffen in her arms, despite his constant tremors.

“A, ah, lot longer,” the confession slipped out in a sigh and he looked away, face contorted in a grimace of both pleasure and embarrassment.

Nora pulled gently back from him, a calm and sober feeling washing through her as she took his expression in. He couldn’t take her watching him right now in that way of hers. It was too much and he had too little.

“Hell..,” he choked out. “Don’t make me spell it out for you, Nora.”

She had the sudden feeling of clarity that mentats brought on as she looked at him now. The apartment, his excessive timidity that always seemed to rise up when things went beyond teasing and innuendo, his hesitation and constant disbelief. All that confidence and charm that made him so good at his job only extended so far when it came to closing the distance between himself and everyone else. She’d known he’d kept people at an arm’s length under an armor of amicable humility, but this...she felt so _foolish_ now. She’d made some _very_ incorrect assumptions about his past over the years, because, like Nick, she’d never had the whole picture to go off of before.

Bashful mode really did come standard on Valentines.

And, god, but that look he was giving her now was breaking her heart. She’d seen him wearing it before. When he had a pair of glowing yellow eyes and a mechanical jaw that showed through the tattered edges of his skin. What she wouldn’t give to go back now and tell that other man how wrong he’d been about himself. How wrong he’d been about being somehow broken and lesser than the pre-war man he believed he’d been modeled after.

He was exactly the same.

Nora smiled at him. The kind of tender smile that conveyed unconditional acceptance. The kind she used to give him, everyday that she’d had the fortune to know him.

“Nick..,” she murmured his name, gentle as a breeze.

Her tone was soothing and she hadn’t laughed yet, but Nick still felt like the lowest of the low in that instant. It was too late to go back now, though. 236 years too late.

“N-never been the most...social guy,” he was dying a little more with every word now, sure his ears would be bright red beacons of his embarrassment. “Spent a lotta time learning to talk to people for the job. Got pretty good at it, even outside of work, but, ah...I, ah...never got around to doing much more than talking.”

“What about Jenny?” She asked softly.

“Wasn’t the kind of thing you could get away with in her circle. Not if you wanted to keep your name and business outta the papers,” he shook his head. “She was sweet on me and I loved her for that, but...I figured I could wait. She had her place, I had mine...didn’t want to do anything that might muck things up for her. It was enough for me that she’d even want to stick around.”

His hands slid from her waist and back into the safety of his own pockets.

“Not really the lady’s man you seem to think I am. Truth is, I can string a set of words together pretty well,” he chuckled sheepishly, taking a sudden interest in the floor. “Not quite as smooth when it came time to act on them.”

Nick cringed as he kept his nose firmly pointed towards his feet. God, he’d been a fool to think he could just walk in here next to Nora and stand toe to toe with her on this. He’d spent so many years of his life trying not to think about it, he regretted now not just manning up and doing something about it earlier. Before a time could come when it might matter. Like now.

“Pretty shameful coming from a guy like me, I suppose,” he finally shrugged, adamantly convinced now of his own damnation. “Guess I don’t look the type.”

She watched him a long moment, taking in the most complete understanding of the man standing before her than she’d ever known previously. He was waiting for her to reject him, she knew. He’d walked himself out on a cliff, prepared for her to let him fall. She tried to imagine all the other people he’d encountered like that in his life. He always expected the worst.

Nora knew it without question, because she knew Nick. Old and new alike, she knew him, through and through.

But Nick, this Nick, didn’t know Nora; didn’t know that she’d never let him fall. He didn’t have the years of camaraderie, of gunfights and nights spent guarding each other’s backs. He didn’t have the memories of dropping the ball when it burned him, only to have her pick up the pass. 

Pulling out the charm and that look she kept in her back pocket that always sent him reeling, she took up the lead like she always did then between them, because he needed her to.

She rolled her hip coquettishly and cocked her head to the side.

“Lucky for me, then,” she purred, the smoke in her voice unnerving. 

That did it. Nick turned back to her, somewhere between confusion and interest. Give the detective a thread and he’d follow you straight to the crime.

“How d’you figure?” He looked at her now, picking up on their game of innuendo without even knowing he’d started to play.

“I could be the world’s worst lay,” she grinned impishly. “And you’d never know.”

Whatever he’d been expecting her to say; that was not it. Nick laughed, unable to stop himself. The dame was all kinds of absurd if she expected him to buy that one. Not with the look she was giving him now.

“I sincerely doubt that,” he chuckled, shaking his head at her. “Can’t imagine there’s much you’d be bad at.”

“I work at it,” she winked. “Practice makes perfect, you know.”

Well. That was...certainly an insinuation. Good lord, she was a tease. A tease who was giving him a way out. He clung to that idea. To the sudden knowledge that this might not be a one time thing. Nick’s mind began supplying him with memories of the dreams from the previous nights. He wanted more than what he was so nervous about engaging in now. He could think of a few things he might want to start with, too.

“Might take a lot of practice,” he coughed. “And, ah, little direction.”

“I’m good with direction,” She bit her lip and gave him the once over. Slowly, she reached up and wound her fingers around the faded length of his dark necktie. “Gotta say I prefer hands on learning, though.”

He wasn’t quite sure what it was about the tie that seemed to draw her attention, but he’d wear the damn thing to bed so long as it kept her talking to him like that.

“Careful, Doll. That sounds like an invitation,” he eased closer, silver tongue coming out to play. “Should I break out my formal attire?”

“Black tie optional,” She gave a gentle tug. 

“What would the lady prefer?” His nerves eased back as his arousal returned. He leaned close as she pulled.

“Black tie, _only_ ,” she grinned wickedly, a moment before her lips met his.

Nick leaned into the kiss, hands fisted in his pockets, letting her direct him by the length of silk knotted around his neck. He realized too late the danger in that kiss. It was smooth and deep and possessive. The kind that left no question where she was leading him. The kind that said she wanted him in a way that was anything but innocent.

He was playing with fire now and he was anxious to burn.

She met his gaze as they pulled back this time, reassuring him without words as she continued on. Her hands came up and slid the towel from around her neck, letting it drop to the floor beside them. His breath caught at the sight of her. The rain had taken what little opacity the cotton still had left to offer and he could feel himself growing hard for want of removing what little obstruction between them remained. He needed to touch her, but his damn body just wouldn’t move.

“Now would be a good time for a little of that direction, Doll,” he breathed out against the sudden rush of arousal.

“Think of it as an investigation,” Nora reached forward, her fingertips wrapping with feather-light touch around his wrists. “Easier to wrap your head around, once you get your hands on all the evidence.”

Much as he wanted to laugh at the context, she made it sound so damn enticing, he’d have her reading him his rights just to hear how it’d sound. Nick had a feeling the woman could read him a damned phonebook and he’d be melting right about now. 

He willed his hands to move and after only a small hesitation, he relinquished his hands to hers. She guided them back to her and shyly, he returned his palms to the side of her hips, brushing a tentative fingertip to the skin lying just beneath the edge of her thin t-shirt. 

She shivered. 

He felt a little bolder then. Just a hint of confidence brought on by the sudden desire to see how she’d react when he really got his hands on her.

“Dunno if you’re dressed for this kinda investigation,” he licked his lips to wet them. “Outta get you out of these wet clothes. Might catch a chill otherwise.”

“Probably wise,” she agreed softly. “Think you could give me a hand with that?”

“S-sure,” he managed on an exhale.

She placed her hands over his, gently guiding them up and underneath the wet fabric. Nick swallowed. Good lord, her skin felt soft as his palms memorized the lithe line of her sides on their long slide North. Inch by inch, the pale skin of her torso came into view until his thumbs rippled over her ribs and came to a halt under her breast line. He was panting now.

“Here,” she left his hands where they’d stopped moving and took hold of the edge of the shirt in her own. “Let me.”

Nick watched with rapt attention as she pulled. The cloth came up and over her head, landing on the towel when she finally released it. Her small breasts spilled just over his thumbs and he exhaled as their gentle weight came to rest against his skin. His fingers twitched to move, but his focus suddenly shifted and the feeling that flooded through him then was painful.

The thin shirt had done a poor job of hiding her breasts from view, but the _scars_ it had still managed to cover. 

Thin silvery lines criss-crossed the skin at random intervals when stimpaks had helped close the wounds. Thicker ones with ragged edges duly reflected the light where stitches had been needed instead. Three small puckered marks dotted her midsection near her navel; old bullet holes closed over, most likely from a pistol. A larger dimple just under her right rib looked like a higher caliber had passed through; perhaps from a sniper rifle, by the size and angle of it. 

A finger tip sized chunk of flesh had been gouged out along the side of a rib, followed by two more that were considerably longer. Nick realized with some dismay, they looked like some kind of claw marks, which had torn instead of cut. The deep, slash of a scar he’d seen over her left shoulder the day she’d left the city crossed down and stopped just before it hit the top of her breast and on her matching hip, a shiny mass of burns, not unlike a ghoul’s flesh, marked the Institute rifle shot that left his other body in shambles.

The smooth skin between the scars was perfect and soft to the touch and spoke of days when her whole body might have shared the same texture. Now she bore a myriad mapping of old cuts and punctures that marked her years spent in the Commonwealth; fighting for the people, fighting for her friends, fighting for survival. 

“Kind of a mess, I know,” she cringed, and Nick realized he’d been staring.

“I didn’t say that,” his left hand traveled lower, brushing over the rifle burn and memorizing the texture there. It was smoother to the touch than it looked like it’d be. “You’ll always be perfection to me, Doll. Not a line on you I’m not already in love with.”

She flushed at that and the look on her face was endearing. He’d grown so used to the cool confidence she carried, it was oddly alluring to catch her so unguarded. Words like vulnerable and delicate weren’t ones he associated with her, not when things like fierce and funny and gentle fit the bill, but she was glass under his hands right now and he held on with care.

“You’re awfully quiet, Mister Valentine,” she said softly. “What’re you thinking?”

“I’m thinking I need another word for you than beautiful,” he was fixated by the rifle burn now, and all it meant. He decided it was his favorite, morbid as that might be. “Beautiful doesn’t do you justice.”

“Flatterer,” she chuckled, though the red in her cheeks intensified. She nodded to the burn he was playing with. “Carrington couldn’t do much about the size of that one. Rifle burns are hard to treat.”

She gave a shy shrug.

“But at least they missed my heart.”

“Was he aiming for it?” Nick felt a sting of worry mixed with relief. She had no scars there.

“You’d think so,” she responded, mischief in her voice.

He watched as she looped a thumb through the belt loop on her left side and tugged it down just far enough to reveal the edge of white cotton above which sat a tiny black mark. Nick snorted against the heart ache in his chest. She’d never stop surprising him.

“That pre-war or post?” He ran a gentle fingertip over the little heart tattoo.

“Pre,” she said, smiling. “Drunken night out after I passed the bar. Woke up with it the morning after.”

“Scandalous,” he shook his head slowly, mesmerized by the marking. “Almost like you were meant for me.”

“Who says I’m not?” she reached up, playing with his tie again. “At the very least, I match the office sign. A little banged up, but still easy to turn on.”

Good god, this woman was going to be the death of him someday. His arousal was back full force now.

“How easy?” he slid his hands higher, cupping her breasts and rolling his thumbs over her hardened nipples. They were a rosy pink and responsive as the pads of his fingers rubbed against them.

Nora gasped at the sudden contact and the sound of her pleasure went straight to Nick’s head. He hissed through his breath as she arched into him, her hands gripping tightly to the pockets of his trousers to steady herself. She was ridiculously soft and so goddamned delicate under his fingers he felt like crying. The sensation of her skin under his own left him feeling drugged and ardent in his pursuit to know all of her.

His hands forcefully slipped back down the length to her backside, squeezing the rounded denim there as he pulled her fully against himself and swallowed her surprise at his sudden enthusiasm with a kiss. This one was hungry and desperate and beyond the point of playing. He wanted her naked. He wanted her now. He held her against his arousal, straining against the cloth of his trousers and ground her hips into his own.

He groaned against her mouth at the contact, the pressure and need and desire overwhelming any nerves he might have had left. His fingers tangled into the silk of her hair as he angled her lips and pushed his tongue in between them to taste her. She was coffee and tobacco and something sweet that left him craving for more and as he assaulted her mouth, she slipped a clever hand between them in his distraction, cupping his erection in her palm and running it down the length of him.

He choked loud and hard on the gasp of pleasure that escaped him and Nora moved her hand again with firm and practiced pressure. Nick screwed his eyes shut and bucked into her fingers, mindlessly chasing the sparks snapping all the way up to his skull from the contact. Jesus, it’d never been like this before. It’d never felt like this before. His own hands were a poor imitation of what hers were currently inspiring in him and in that moment he thought he might die if he didn’t have more of it.

He was too close to his edge when his hand caught her wrist, dragging it up and away from him as he fought to keep his composure, before he lost himself to her touch. 

“You’ll have me in my trousers if you keep that up,” he heaved, his fingers kneading circles into the nape of her neck for need to keep his hands occupied. “I don’t think I can wait anymore.”

“Then don’t,” she leaned in, pressing her lips to his throat, sucking at the pulse point and sending his mind swimming.

Something inside of him broke at that sweet sensation and his hand on her backside tugged at the shorts in desperation.

“Off,” he pleaded. “Get these off.”

What followed became a frantic divesting of clothing, as Nora stepped back and popped the button of the denim free and Nick pulled his shirt tails out of his trousers. His fingers shook as he pulled at his own line of buttons, watching with barely contained desperation as she slid the shorts from her hips and was left standing before him in a scrap of white cotton and lace. He’d barely discharged his arms from his shirt when she reached for his t-shirt and lifted the edge. His hands rushed to help her and he pulled the damn thing over his head, just in time to see her staring at his shoulder.

There, marring his skin, were a pair of deep and ragged scars. 

He watched with heavy breaths as her fingertips traced their lengths, the feeling of her skin to his burning the whole way.

“Shoot out in Chicago,” he panted. “Docs weren’t worried about how pretty it’d look when they were digging the slugs out. Not as fancy as yours, but still…”

She was on him again before he could finish the thought, her mouth warm and wet and firm against his. He held her tightly, hands scrambling over her skin for purchase and the need to get closer as her breasts molded against the soft smattering of hair across his chest. When they parted for air, he felt the longing he’d carried for her for so long shifting into a need so fucking powerful, it threatened to drive him straight down to his knees.

“Get on the bed, Nora,” he all but growled between breaths, voice low and done with games.

She had the nerve to smile at him then, pulling away, and easing herself down to the mattress where she held his gaze and hooked her thumbs into that little scrap of white cotton and lace. He watched transfixed as she lifted her hips by her shoulders, and slid them down the length of her pale legs, before tossing them aside. 

He unfastened his trousers as she lay there watching him, freckled and scared and more erotic than any fantasy had ever prepared him for. Her eyes never left his as his pants and boxers hit the floor. Her eyes never left his as his knee sunk into the mattress and he climbed between her legs. Her eyes never left his as he pressed his palms into the sheets beside her shoulders, lowering his hips to meet hers.

The first touch as her sex kissed his own was near paralyzing and he struggled to keep his focus locked to that inviting blue gaze. He grimaced as he moved his hips with purpose this time, sliding his length against her with a deep and shuddering groan. She was hot and slick and ready for him.

He fell to his elbows and arched over her, forehead pressed to hers and desperate. He was shaking now. Why couldn’t he stop shaking now? His grey eyes came back to hers in panic and one slender hand came up to meet his cheek in grounding.

“N-nora..,” he gasped her name, low and pleading. “I can’t...I need…”

In that moment, he wasn’t even sure what he was asking for. The want was too much and his heart was too full to make any sense of it. The gravity of what he was about to do hit him hard and left him raw and aching in its wake. His dreams were no longer _just_ dreams now and this reality would be _his_ reality for keeps. 

Sheer terror flooded through him in that instant. That he would lose this. That he would lose her. That this happiness wasn’t his to take.

But one look in that blue sky of hers told him different, calming him before he fell. Keeping him together before he could break.

“I’ve got you,” she murmured, reaching between them. “I’m yours, Nick. And you’re mine. Everything else? Just time and details.”

He met her smile then, shuddering at her ever-gentle words and at her ever-gentle touch. Shuddered as she led him forward, though he’d lost the tie in their feverish undressing. Shuddered as he felt himself against her slick, wet entrance and pushed forward, burying himself in her heat.

It was overwhelming.

He fit within her so completely and she surrounded him so tightly, it was _overwhelming_. When she’d gasped at his intrusion, he’d nearly spilled himself completely out of fervor for it all. 

She kissed him then, as he rested there.

Slow, beautiful kisses that pulled lightly at his lips with care. Languid, easy kisses that reminded him who he was with and why. Feather-light kisses that belied want that told him this wasn’t an ending of anything. It was only the beginning and she was there with him.

His breathing calmed as he became acclimated to her heat and he thrust.

It was awkward at first, his hips jerking in short erratic strokes.

And then it was familiar.

And then something inside Nick seemed to wake up and take over; a mixture of instinct and memories he couldn’t yet claim; evening out his thrusts into a steady rhythm, punctuated by each slap of his skin against hers.

She was hot and wet and oh-so-tight around him, but despite his body’s desperation to pump hard and fast and heavy; he took his time with her. Nick thrust with long smooth strokes, writhing against her with determined control as she shivered and pleaded beneath him. Their gaze never broke and Nick reveled in maintaining that contact as confidence began to grow with each thrust and her strangled cries of euphoria whispered by his ears.

He infused each undulation with love and with unspoken promises of his devotion to the angel underneath him, imagining the soft sounds she made and the smoke in her voice calling his name would haunt him for the rest of his life.

He fucked her in deep, slow motions, rolling his hips to meet hers and wondering at all the reasons he’d wasted waiting for this. She was his. And he was hers. And right now, that was all that mattered.

Nick also realized, with some perverse curiosity spurred on by her reactions, that he’d never fucked Nora like this before; when he was in that other body, when he’d made this woman his wife.

“ _Goddamit_ , Nick,” she panted beneath him, clinging and desperate and trying to urge his hips to move faster. “You won’t break me! _Move_!”

“Thought that’s what I was doing,” He chuckled low and breathy as he watched her writhe in desperation. “Something the matter, Doll?”

“Faster, Nick, please,” she keened, her fingers scraping at his shoulders, hips bucking against him in abandon to hurry his pace.

“I was under the impression we were gonna take this slow,” he murmured with a wicked grin. “Gotta take my time with this... _practice_.”

“Ugh! What happened to following directions?” She whined as he barreled out against that sweet spot deep inside her again, sliding back before it could send her tipping over.

“Think I’ve got the gist of it now,” he eased his hips back against her again in the slowest stroke he could manage. Her eyes rolled back as he filled her and she clenched her teeth to keep from moaning. Her frustration was arousing. “Not quite what you’re used to I take it?”

Nora’s eyes shot back to his, even as his next stroke sent her reeling. He was _playing_ with her.

“Y-you...you think this is funny?” Her laugh came through on a gasp.

“Not at all, sweetheart, not at all,” he mused smoothly. “Just making a thorough _investigation_.”

Oh, he was playing with fire now.

Nora gathered her strength and wrapped her arms long and sensuously over his back, spreading her fingers into the muscle there and delighting in the unsuppressed moan they elicited. She massaged them deep and hard and slow into his shoulders, working up to the column of his neck and trailing her nails behind his ears.

Nick’s hips jerked forward erratically, falling out of his easy pace.

“W-what are you up to?” He stammered out, trying to regain his control.

“Hey Valentine,” she said softly, the breathy tones of that love song tickling his neck and sending sparks right through to his groin. “Do me a favor?”

“W-what’s that?” He swallowed, eyes closed and focused now on the feeling of her body curling up into his like a cat.

“Fuck me like you _mean_ it,” she purred. Leaning up, she pressed her lips to the spot just below his jawline, the one that she _hoped_ might carry over between bodies, as her nails scraped the sensitive skin behind his ear.

“Oh, _god_ , Nora—!” He wailed against the sudden ecstasy the lightning flashing through his nerves brought on.

She repeated her motions and Nick came undone; a novice at the mercy of her knowledge of him. His hips spasmed and his pace quickened, one hand rising to grip the metal bar of the headboard in an ironclad grip as he thrust into her at a frantic pace. His breaths came fast and ragged now as he drove into her with a desperation he’d never known; despite its familiarity. 

God, what had she _done_ to him.

One of her hands joined beside his at the headboard and she whispered filthy little secrets to him between breaths that filled him with an unabashed carnal need, the sound of such wanton words from _her_ mouth inflaming him. She’d never spoken to him like that in his dreams and the taboo of such lewd fantasies from his _angel_ was intoxicating beyond reason. He wanted to take her, fuck her senseless and fulfill every single base thought she was inspiring.

He’d never imagined it would be like this. Not for him. But rather than fight it, to slow down and play the gentle lover, his hands took hold of her brusquely and with bruising grip he rode her rough and hard as she was begging him to. With his free hand, he hooked his elbow around her knee, bringing her legs up to surround his waist. He dragged her further beneath him, angling his cock deep into her folds, thrusting in wild abandon to satisfy the rising need to find release. 

He barely registered his actions when she cried out to him, his name on her lips in that moment the only thing that mattered, and when the walls of her sex began to milk him for all he was worth as her completion sent her reeling, he tumbled into the abyss after her with a strangled shout and her name dripping from the gratified moans that came after.

She’d drained every last drip of him dry by the time his vision cleared of the stars she’d ignited within them, and he shuddered as the strength bled out of taut limbs, collapsing forward to embrace her; arms limp and boneless.

Nick rolled her to the side with him, so as not to crush her, gathering her to him and kissing her between heaving gasps of air. It was the kind of kiss that inspired love songs. The kind of kiss that spoke of devotion, and gratefulness for the existence of another in the world. It was the kind of kiss that knew unequivocal happiness, sated in satisfaction.

Nora curled into him, smiling against his lips and feeling his heart still racing under her fingertips as they played with the fine curls of hair at his chest. It was a small and novel thing, but she found she adored his hair, like she adored his blushes, and the beating muscle sounding beneath her palm. She loved him just as much now as when that pulse had been the timing of coolant and his eyes glowed yellow in their aftermath.

“That was...that was a dirty trick,” he chuckled, limbs trembling yet as he fought to relax. “What did you do to me?”

Nora grinned.

“A little of this..,” she traced his ear with her nails again.

Nick gave a startled gasp.

“And a little of that..,” she pressed her lips to that spot just below his jawline again and sucked; Nick clinging to her wildly as he moaned.

“Christ,” he exhaled as the sparks died out under his skin. “You’re gonna kill me if you keep that up.”

For as confident as he’d been feeling, he suddenly felt like he had a lot to learn.

“You’re sensitive there,” she said, matter-of-factly. 

“Anyplace else I should know about?” He laughed. “So I might prepare some defenses for your next attack?”

“You’re defenseless against me, Mister Valentine,” she grinned impishly and stroked that spot behind his ear again, delighting in Nick’s keen reactions.

“Hopelessly,” he agreed, settling beside her on the pillow.

As they lay there, bodies tangled together and lips still but a breath apart, he began to sober, brushing her cheek softly with the backs of his knuckles and marveling that she’d made his dreams real.

He thought back to that day on the steps of the Old North Church when he’d asked her if they’d always been so close. He wondered now how he’d ever manage to keep any distance from her at all now.

“Cap for that thought,” she kissed his nose.

“Nothing,” he shook his head and smiled. “Just lookin’ at you, Doll. Just lookin’ at you.”

“Like what you see?” She chuckled.

“Depends,” he narrowed his eyes at her. “You got any of those spots I can exploit? Feelin’ a little outmatched here right now. Might be nice to even the score card.”

“For a detective, you’re not very observant,” she smirked at him, guiding his hand back just under her breast line as it had been when they’d first started. 

She pressed his palm up to cup her, placing his thumb over her nipple. Nick observed carefully as he tentatively brushed the pad of his thumb over her rosy nub, captivated as her head gave a little jerk and she immediately arched into him.

“Well, well,” he repeated the motion with a knowing grin as she shuddered and wrapped her arms tightly around his neck. “Easy to turn on, indeed. Got anymore?”

“You’re a smart man, Nick,” she purred, retaliating as she took to that spot beneath his jaw again. “I’m sure you’ll figure them out.”

“Gladly,” he breathed, eager and rolling over her again.

They spent a long while that evening under the rain pattering on the roof, reacquainting themselves with each other as Ella Fitzgerald sang softly from the player downstairs and the moon came out to join the stars for the night.

When they finally climbed beneath the sheets, satiated and exhausted, and Nora settled into his arms humming her contentment against his chest, Nick’s last conscious thought before sleep took him was that he’d never get tired of the sweet scent of her soap and the smoke still clinging to silk of her hair.

All or nothing; this was _love_.

And for once, Nick Valentine knew happiness. Happiness that had found him again at long last; after he’d lost sight of her 200 years back at that big house under the wisteria tree and a rose garden, off Newbury and Fairfield Street in Boston, when he’d left the party to go home to his bay window, and said goodbye.


	27. To Know That You're Mine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \------------READ ME, FRIENDS!----------------
> 
> Just wanted to drop a quick note to say, I won't be able to update for a week or so. I've got a contract job I have to complete and not a lot of time to do it in, so, I have to take a short break. It will NOT take me a month to get back to it, but I know even a week can suck when you're into something, so I just wanted to apologize for that. There's still a few chapters left and I'll get back to finishing this ASAP. Thank you again for all your wonderful comments and for reading! I promise I'll finish this ASAP. 
> 
> -Afterlife

Nora woke to the sound of someone knocking at her door.

She ignored it in favor of the warmth she was currently wrapped and basking in, Nick’s arm wrapped tightly around her middle and his soft breaths whispering against the side of her neck. He hadn’t been joking about running hot and she indulged in the feeling of his skin against hers. As someone who tended to run a little on the cold side, she was more than content to soak up his excess heat.

She sighed at the small comfort that the slow and steady rhythm of his heartbeat at her back inspired. It wasn’t all that different than the continuous cycles of coolant pumping and she wondered, not for the first time, if his other body had been designed that way on purpose. It was strange now to see peach colored flesh on the hands that held hers rather than the dirty pearlescent white she’d grown accustomed to. No, not strange. Different. It was different.

And in a wonderful way.

His skin was much softer and more pliant now beneath her touch, his breaths warm and nuanced, and his face just a little more expressive than it used to be. She’d loved him as he was, she loved him as he used to be, she loved him now, more than ever. Much as she wanted to hate the mad Doctor Birk, and she did, she couldn’t hate the outcome of his experiment. Not when he was warm and alive and breathing and curled around her back like she was his and his alone.

He’d worn himself out on her last night and for a man who claimed to have very little experience, he was an eager learner once he’d gotten started. She wondered, if the memories ever did come back, what it would be like to go through that experience twice. The experience of losing yourself so completely for the first time after worrying there would never be a first time to begin with. Nick was passion’s fool no matter what body he inhabited and he made her the same. She secretly looked forward to spending days wrapped up in one another once again. He made her feel loved and desired like no other and she’d worship him with every last bit of her being until he felt the same again.

God, she’d _missed_ him.

The knock came again.

Nora sighed. No rest for the wicked. She glanced at her Pip Boy, noting it was still before eight in the morning. If this was Preston, she’d tell him where he could stick his damn rifle today. She was retired, and after their most recent fiasco, she planned to stay that way. For a long while. At least a couple months.

She made to slide out of the bed when the arm around her middle tightened and pulled her back. She felt his lips caress her shoulder in long, lazy kisses, while his hand worked its way to her breast. His thumb drifted over her nipple in a languid pass and she shuddered to her core against him. 

His sleepy chuckle flowed warm and tingling over her shoulder.

She regretted teaching him that trick. He’d exploit her for it now, she was sure of it.

He started pressing his kisses up the column of her neck, humming against the skin there and making her shiver in want of more. His hand left her breast and slid leisurely over her stomach, tracing the scars over her left hip, and over the crest of her thigh, before his fingers wandered lower.

“Nick—!” She gasped sharply as he sucked on the skin behind her ear in the same instant that his fingers parted her and slid between her folds.

“Morning, Doll,” he mused playfully, his voice still thick with sleep. Jesus, she could listen to that rumble in his tone forever. “Think I might be up for some more _practice_ right now.”

Ohh god, he could practice on her whenever he wanted to at this rate. She could already feel his erection, hard and wanting against her lower back, and his fingers…oh!

Nora whined as his hand worked against her, hesitating only a moment before she hooked her knee over his thigh to give him better access. He didn’t disappoint and on his next pass down her slit, he toyed with her a moment before slipping his first two fingers inside.

She groaned and turned to kiss him, capturing his mouth in fervor as he thrust into her with barely contained enthusiasm. Goddamn, he’d be the death of her. They breathed each other’s air and he moved to replace his hand with something more substantial.

The knock came a third time.

“Just ignore it,” he breathed, desperate to be inside her now. “They’ll get the idea once you start screaming my name.”

“Shocking, Mister Valentine,” she kissed him with a laugh and pulled away, much to his consternation. “What truly vulgar language from such a fine and upstanding detective.”

“Seem to remember some choice words coming out of an angel last night,” he grinned at her, despite the flush of embarrassment coloring his cheeks. “Couple of requests I’d be happy to fulfill if she’d get back in this bed with me.”

Well, _that_ invitation would be haunting her fantasies for a while. The man was an insufferable tease when he wanted to be. She’d make him pay for it later.

“Don’t tempt me,” she laughed, snatching his shirt off the floor and nimbly doing up the buttons. “They’ll keep knocking at this rate. It’ll be faster to just deal with it.”

“ _Shooting_ them might be faster,” he groaned half into the pillow, watching her skip down the stairs in his shirt. Seeing her in his kit was every bit as arousing as he’d imagined it’d be and he wrapped a palm around himself in anticipation of her return.

Good lord, she’d be the death of him.

Giving herself the once over at the bottom of the stairs to make certain she was presentable, Nora padded to the front door and cracked it open, prepared to tell the intruder waiting outside in no uncertain terms to fuck off.

“Ellie!” Nora said in surprise, pulling the door open wider to greet the woman and immediately regretting her previous thoughts. The secretary was looking polished as always and holding a huge basket covered with an old red and white checked cloth. “Good morning!”

“Oh, Nora, you’re home!” She seemed equally surprised, her lips breaking into a wide smile. “Travis told me news around town was that you made it back last night, but when I saw Piper, she said you’d be stopping by the office this morning, so I went there first. When you didn’t answer I got a little worried.”

Nora felt abashed at leaving Ellie standing on her doorstep for so long. She usually made it a point to let her know she was still in one piece after leaving the city.

“Sorry, about that Ellie,” she cringed. “Didn’t mean to leave you knocking.”

“Oh, it’s fine, I really didn’t mean to wake you so early after you just got back and all,” Ellie waved her off. “How is everything? You doing alright? Have you been eating?”

After four days at war, Nora could sincerely say she’d missed constant Ellie’s mothering. It always made everything feel so normal in her life; it was a comfort to be home.

“Everything’s great, El,” she replied in earnest. “Just a bit tired.”

“I can imagine,” she chuckled. “The day you learn to sit still and live the quiet life will be the day we declare a new City holiday.”

Above her, Nora could hear the bed sheets shifting. She wondered if Nick was headed up the roof for a smoke.

“Did you need anything from me, El?” Nora asked, knowing sometimes she dropped in for help with something at the office when one of them was out.

“Oh, no, I’ve got everything just fine, only..,” she hesitated. “You haven’t seen Nick around, have you?”

“Nick?” Nora flushed, before setting her expression back to something more neutral.

Too late. Ellie had caught her. Ellie caught everything.

“Oh, Nora, honey,” she sighed. “Haven’t you talked to him yet? I know you guys had it out before you left, but I’m sure things will go easy between you two now. Sorry to say, Harry and his big mouth kinda spoiled your secret.”

“Oh,” Nora nodded sheepishly. So, it was Harry that ratted her out. She owed that man a brahmin steak dinner and the finest bottle of scotch in her collection.

“Don’t worry though, I think Nick took it well, all things considered,” she said quickly, reading Nora’s expression wrong. “He’s been out and all over town with me for days. I think he’s really getting his feet back under him now. I’m surprised you haven’t seen him yet, he’s been staying here you know. Honestly, you need to have a talk with him.”

“Sounds serious,” Nick sauntered up behind Nora, clad only in a pair of his trousers. His hair was still ruffled from sleep, as he slid an arm casually over her shoulders. “Need a word with me, Doll?”

“Not at all,” she elbowed him lightly. “I was just trying to tell Ellie you were upstairs.”

“Mornin’, El,” he grinned slow and knowingly.

“You’re a terrible man, Nick,” Ellie laughed and shook her head. “I swear, I don’t know why I worry so much about you Valentines. Two hearts in a pair, you are.”

Nora was the one to grin this time.

“Well I’m glad things worked out anyway,” Ellie shrugged. “I take it the office will be closed for a bit while you relax after your trip, as per usual?”

That caught Nick’s attention.

“For a _week_ at least. Figured I’d take my time, go _slow_ ,” Nora nodded. Her words were laden with innuendo and Nick flushed. “You know how it is.”

“So does Nick, by the way his ears are turnin’ red,” she cackled. 

Nick just about died right then. That damn woman was up on everything.

“I’ll leave you two be,” she handed Nora the basket she was carrying. “Wasn’t sure if you’d eaten yet, so I made you some breakfast.”

“This is breakfast?” Nora laughed at the weight of the basket.

“I might have thrown lunch in there, too,” she winked. “Don’t want you slippin’ down the drain, y’know?”

“Thanks, Ellie,” Nora rolled her eyes with a smile. “Say hey to Travis for us.”

“I will, you have fun now,” she waved back as she headed off. “Knock his socks off!”

“Close the damn door before she has the whole neighborhood knowing our business,” Nick chuckled, taking the basket from her.

“Thought you were into that a few minutes ago,” She teased, throwing his words back at him from earlier as she shut the door.

“Damn straight,” he murmured, reaching over her shoulder to lock it. The basket was no longer in his hands. “So, the office closed every time you come back home?”

“Always. There are some perks in it for you when I step out of town,” she shivered a little as he stepped up closer behind her.

“Such as?” He asked, the stubble at his cheek rubbing against her own.

“Such as the things we get up to when I return home,” She said, playing at normal conversation even as he brushed the hair away from her neck and let his mouth return to the work it’d been doing upstairs when they woke. “Sleep well?”

“Don’t think I’ve ever slept so well in my life,” he whispered between kisses. His arms came around her now, hands exploring with a possessive, heated grip. One slipped inside the collar of the button down, massaging her breast. The other ran lower, trailing down the side of her thigh before sneaking up beneath the shirt tales and skimming over her hip. “Can’t get over how _soft_ you are. It’s enough to send a guy over the moon.”

His fingers slid back between her thighs and he stroked her in long firm dips and circles, coating himself in the moisture there and reveling in the lewd slick sounds of her sex between their breaths.

“Enough to drive a man crazy,” he shivered, biting gently at the curve of her neck.

“N-Nick—!” She breathed, her palm smacking against the door; legs threatening to buckle. She closed her eyes as he worked at her, concentrating on the sound of his voice and the strain of need bubbling up with every word.

“Tell me what you _want_ , Nora,” he begged. “Tell me how to _please_ you right now.”

She could feel his erection, pressed hard and desperate behind her, his trousers the only thing separating them from completion. She ground her hips back and into him, enjoying the way his whole body tightened around her in excitement every time they connected. He was trying so hard to maintain his control right now, she knew. What happened when he lost it was always a pleasant surprise. 

“I just want _you_ , Nick,” she breathed out. “I’ve always _wanted_ you.”

He trembled at her confession. He’d never get tired of hearing her say things like that. She made him feel so human and cherished it hurt.

“ _Christ_ , the things you do to me,” he groaned, burying his nose into her hair, and slicking his fingers between her folds. “The things you make me want to do to you.”

Fuck, she wouldn’t last long if he kept this up. She was already reaching her limit.

“Show me,” Nora purred back at him, arching her breast into his grip. “Don’t hold back, Nick. Not with me.”

He groaned at her acquiescence, surrendering to the knowledge that this was his _reality_ now. This woman, his _wife_ ; this beautiful, enticing, undenying angel was his, every bit as much as he was hers. And she _wanted_ him. _She wanted him_ , unsuppressed and unashamed in his desire for her.

Dear god, he loved her.

His hand slid across her in one last teasing stroke before he pulled back and released her. The loss of contact was so sudden, Nora pitched forward with a whine of desperation at the loss. She turned to see where he’d disappeared to, only to find him hovering still behind her, leaving little space for her between himself and the door. There was a look about him just then. One that had gone from the acute pain of passion, barely bottled, to something more mischievous. Something bold and new.

“What are you up to?” She eyed him in excited suspicion.

He pressed her up against the red wood, until her back was flush with the door. There was a predatory look in his eye now that appeared downright salacious.

“Just making good on that promise, Doll,” he drawled, though his attempt to play it smooth was ruined by his lungs and their need for air. His chest was heaving in anticipation; voice low and rousing and ready.

“What promise is that?” She grinned, an impish look crossing her features; an invitation.

“The one where I have you screaming my _name_ ,” he murmured and captured her lips in a bruising kiss.

 _There_ was his fire now. There was his heat. She loved it when he was rough and aggressive, taking her in the spur of the moment without words. She loved it when he was sweet and tender, seducing her body with his under a blanket of romance and loving words. But this, oh god this…

This was Nick without _constraints_.

She slid her arms up and over his shoulders, feeling his hands already working themselves up her hips and under the button down again. His grey eyes were cloudy now; one stormcloud away from a lightning strike. The air between them was electric.

“Make me,” she challenged him.

And then he was lifting her by the thighs. And pushing her back into that red door. And kissing her. Kissing her. _Kissing_ her.

They scrabbled against one another in fervor, Nora wrapping her legs around him and hooking her ankles behind his back. Their mouths battled for purchase as she reached one hand between them and unfastened his trousers. The agony of skin being separated when ecstasy was running high began to boil over. They worked frantically together to move the cloth impeding his progress out of the way, arms straining and hips twisting and mouths still trying to stay connected in the rush. 

“Should have undone these before you came at me,” she chuckled, breathless under the racing of her heart.

“I’ll remember it for next time,” he gasped in his impatience, finally managing to free himself from the damned pants. “Now, unbutton that shirt for me, Doll. It’s in the way.”

Her fingers fumbled with the fasteners as he held her, barely getting them all free when she felt him pressing against her entrance for admittance. She clung to him as he penetrated her without ceremony; one quick thrust and they were groaning at the searing connection where he filled her.

Nick was panting as he held her there, trying to maintain his dignity in the face of her wanton heat. He’d thought his composure would be easier to manage after their first night together, but he was just as close to the edge when he entered her now as he’d been the last time. She was so goddamned tight around him and moving right now seemed like the more dangerous option than drowning in the need to push forward.

Nora gave him a wicked grin when he didn’t move. Using the door for leverage she lifted herself up on tense arms, before sinking slowly down again, biting her lip against the pleasure of being stretched around him inch by inch. Nick choked on a moan, his hips bucking up and into her.

“Thought you were going to have me screaming,” she challenged with a smirk.

Nora rolling her hips, staring him down as if they were playing a game of pistols at dawn, rather than having morning after sex up against their front door. Her unnerving confidence and the wet silk between her legs sliding over him was overwhelming. It sent him shivering below her again. 

Goddamnit, he wasn’t about to lose this dual. He wanted her writhing; to see that desperate and delicate undoing when she let herself go underneath him. She made him want her in a way he’d never wanted for anything, and he hated her for that, in the same breath he loved her more for it all the same. She was his angel and the devil he’d die for before he’d ever want to be rid of her and he wanted the whole damn world to know; that out of everyone she could have fallen in with, he’d been the one that she _chose_.

That damn bruise at her neck still burned him. The mark of another man touching her flesh, even in violence— _especially_ in violence—made him raw to his core and furious. He’d wrap her tight in cotton wool and satin bed sheets just to protect her if he thought for a moment she would let him, but he knew to love her meant to let her be free and wild and to walk by her side, even as her life sometimes scared the hell out of him. 

He wanted a mark of his own on her, and one of her making on him; something tangible and visible and reassuring by sight alone that this wasn’t a dream and that he’d never wake up again without her. He wanted her love and her life and her breath and her body. He wanted the whole goddamned city to know she was Mrs. Valentine; not just _some_ girl, but _his_ girl and that meant the world to him. 

Nick gritted his teeth.

He wanted her to _scream_.

He’d _make_ her scream.

“Darling, when I’m through with you, the whole damned Commonwealth’s gonna know my name,” he growled. 

Pressing her higher against the door, Nick leaned forward and wrapped his mouth over her breast, dragging his tongue over her sensitive nipples and sending her jolting up against him. She arched hard against his lips as he ardently suckled and nipped at her to the tune of her strangled cries. He was enamored at how passionate she could flip on a dime in his arms, pleased she was as lost in his touch as he was in hers.

“Oh shit—Nick, yes!” she choked out as he ran his tongue straight up her sternum to the pulse point at her throat and sucked. He was ravenous and she was more than willing to be consumed. “Ah—Please!”

“Please, what?” He rumbled; a chuckle broken with each panting breath. He caught hold of her earlobe and teased her for a moment, enjoying the way she whined and squirmed wildly against him as he did so, before placing his taunting words low and close to her ear. “Couldn’t quite hear that one, Doll. You’ll have to be _louder_.”

Nora grunted in frustration and pulled him closer. Nick’s eyes flew open in pure and avid lust; her lips against his ear and whispering in no uncertain terms how she wanted him to fuck her, with what, and where; the obscenity of it alone driving him to exhilaration. Christ, where had she learned this stuff? Every suggestive syllable went straight to his groin, spurring him on to do exactly what she was begging of him. Here he’d been trying to seduce her and she’d managed to bewitch him again. He had a sinking feeling they’d always be playing a game of flipping tables

It was a stimulating idea, to say the least.

The thought she left him with was licentious and as he processed it, she pulled back. Leaning into the door with a provocative little hum, she grinned at him. He gaped at her.

“Was that _loud_ enough, Mister Valentine?” She purred, tracing a finger over the tip of one breast and giving him a look that could melt candles from the heat of it. “Or would you still like me to _scream_ it for you?”

She licked her lips in provocation and cocked a brow at him, waiting for his response. His grip on her hips tightened; the passion coiled in the pit of his gut sprung. Nick snapped. She wanted it rough right now? He’d give it to her rough. He’d give her anything she asked for and then some. 

“Start screaming,” he said, so low and heady it was nearly a snarl. 

He braced himself and drove back into her, wild and high on her words and the feelings she ignited deep in his chest. Good god, she was wet and hot and ready for him. And the knowledge that he inspired this woman’s _lust_ , his _wife’s_ passion; Hell, she _wanted_ him. She wanted _him_.

Nora jerked violently as he moved against her this time, closing her eyes against the onslaught and losing herself to the feeling of her husband as he forced himself deeper between her thighs. He fucked her hard and fast and rough against their front door, pounding up into her with an unforgiving rhythm. Unrestrained, a high and loud wail escaped her as he beat their hips together in a punishing slap of skin and fervor. Nick lost himself to the moment as she scratched at his shoulders and begged him for her release. He nipped at the soft skin of her neck; desperate to get closer; needing to taste her; wanting nothing more than for her to take her pleasure in his arousal. He slid one hand more securely around her backside and palmed her breast with the other, pressing her firmly against the wood and thrusting in quick, firm strokes.

“ _Scream_ for me, Doll,” he gasped again into her ear, raking his thumb over her nipple. “Let the whole damn _city_ know who’s fucking you.”

Nora did scream then. The thought of Nick Valentine, who was always the gentleman in public, who was gentle with her to all ends; the thought of him using _that_ term with her always sent her straight over the edge. It was so rare for him to debase himself with such crassness, she couldn’t help but to find it arousing when he finally let himself go in the heat of the moment. The longing and the ardor he could infuse in that one word was euphoric. Heat built to breaking as he ravished her in that tight space between himself and the door; burned and exploded and she came apart in his arms.

“NICK—!”she howled.

His name echoed through the air of their house, calling to him for one ghostly second beyond her words. He came uncontrollably with a shout, spilling into her, and riding her through their mutual release. 

And then there was silence.

She clung to him for dear life in the aftermath, lightning tearing through her nerves in bright aftershocks and waves of toe-curling bliss. Nora was still reeling from their amatory activities; she’d seen him come totally unbound in the moment before, when passions ran to fever-pitch and she’d been out of town for too long, but she’d not expected it so soon with _this_ Nick. The one who was still shy and adjusting. The one who had just stepped into bed with her yesterday and lacked the memory of years gone by where every moment they weren’t together felt like one they’d wasted. And they’d certainly never shied away from furniture before in their love games, but the door? The door was new. 

She marveled at the man still holding her now as they fought to find air in the moments after. New or old, she doubted he would ever stop surprising her.

And dear, God, but she loved him for it. For everything that he was. For everything he would eventually be; when days and weeks turned into years and they’d built up a lifetime of new memories together.

It was an exhilarating thought, as she hung against him, pressed into the door.

He cradled her there a long while, letting her shiver and quake in his arms until the tension finally eased back and let them breathe. She closed her eyes and pressed her face to the crook of his neck as he gently set her back to her feet, the feeling of him sliding out of her sending a whole new wave of tremors through her veins and making her knees weak. He kept her trapped between his chest and the red wood, murmuring words of love into her hair.

“You alright, Doll?” He asked, brushing the wayward strands back and away from her face and pressing feather-light kisses to her temple. “Was...was that too much?”

Hesitation and worry; _there_ in his voice was her loving husband. The one who followed her and led her when passions ran high and fretted in the aftermath he’d somehow ruined everything in a moment of abandon. Different; and still the same man.

“Hell, Nora,” there was an edge of self-admonishment to his tone now; his face contorting with fear and promises never to do it again. “Did I hurt you?”

She shook her head against him, bonelessly reaching up and dragging his lips to her own to assuage his growing anguish. She tugged at his mouth languidly now; a far cry from the brutal pressure between them just moments ago. His hands shook as they slid around her waist, treating her with the delicacy of spun glass. There was still a question in his touch and as sense came back to her and her thighs grew stable once again, she threaded her fingers into the hair at his neck and dug her fingertips against muscle in calming circles. 

“You didn’t hurt me, Nick. Far from it. That was just... _intense_ ,” she whispered and smiled against those nervous lips of his. She left no room for doubt. “I _liked_ it.”

She felt his arms tighten immediately. She was no longer glass in his arms; once again the most precious thing in his care.

“Damn it, don’t scare me like that,” he breathed.

“You aren’t going to break me, Nick,” she said, smoothing a hand through his hair. “Didn’t you like it?”

“I think that was obvious,” he snorted. “I just...I don’t know what came over me. I should handle you with more care.”

“I don’t think you’ve ever handled me with anything _but_ care,” she reassured him in soft tones. “So, don’t stop reaching for me, alright?”

God this woman was easy on him.

“Don’t think I could if I tried,” he chuckled. “That was... _intense_.”

She laughed at his candor and they stood there for a while just holding one another. She was a vice for him now, stronger than any whiskey or chem. He felt he could take on the whole world with her in his arms, propriety be damned. He wanted this. All of it.

He felt her shift and it caught his attention. Dropping her arms, Nora let his button down shirt drift from her body. This whisper of cloth as it hit the ground changed the mood immediately, from the easing panic to something more sensual. She heard his breath catch as she left herself naked in his embrace and the hard swallow of longing as she pressed her lips to the underside of his jaw. They moved without words then, his hand carefully wrapped in her own. She lead him around the corner and down the hallway to the shower turning on the water to let it run hot before helping him out of his trousers with gentle hands and reassuring touches of her lips. 

Nick was entranced by her care, following her into the warm steam and sharing in her quiet caresses as she lathered him up with soothing deep strokes of her palms, easing the tautness from his shoulders and taking the stress out from his limbs. She sang him her love song in between honest words of adoration and encouragement. She seduced him with chaste romantic kisses and when both of them had been rinsed clean, she pressed him to the shower wall and stroked him while she breathed in his shallow gasps between soft lips.

When he was begging her name between “God, yes” and “Don’t stop”, she turned and pressed her hands to the tile, offering herself up to the tune of “Make love to me, Nick” wrapped thick in smoke and desire. She reached for him, and he slid into her welcoming heat with gentle hands on her hips and a slow easy thrust that sent sparklers down both their spines. They tossed love letters over the fence of her shoulder as he rolled his hips into hers and the slow build led to a high fall that left both of them buzzing and refreshed.

Her ran the soap over them the second time, wrapping her in cotton towels when they were done and letting her lead him back up their stairs to the bed. They lay there afterwards for hours, sometimes dozing, sometimes talking, sometimes making love anew. It was intimate. It was personal.

He’d never known this kind of bliss.

When they woke again in the early afternoon, she’d plied him out of bed with promises of coffee and they sat, both half-dressed and curled up in each other on their red couch, going through his suitcases and the basket of breakfast that Ellie had brought.

They sorted through his surviving books, finding shelf space for the titles among their already vast collection in the house, swapping anecdotes and literary quotes and noting a hardcover or two they’d both read. She told him about the bookstore they’d been visiting the day this all had started and he told her he’d read to her from the books they’d found therein while she’d been in recovery. She asked him to read her the books again now that she was awake and could remember them.

They sorted through his clothes she’d brought, popping them into the laundry after accumulating 200 years of dust. He asked about the pile of battlegear she’d stripped off the night before and she recapped four days of war for him over a second pot of coffee and a pile of clean laundry they’d been folding. She told him about her fears, about the message Ayo had left behind for her; she told him about the sea of people under a banner of White Wings ready to die if need be. She told him about Strong and about Zain and how she mourned their losses deeply. She told him about Deacon and Hancock and the bargain they had made between them to get her to the roof. She told him how she’d thought she’d lost them both at one point and how that thought alone had almost killed her. She told him how in her darkest moment, when she thought all else was lost, she’d asked MacCready for mercy.

Nick hadn’t liked that.

She told him about how things turned out after, about the lives lost and the lives saved. She told him about huffing Jet with the boys and laying under the starlight and wondering if Nick might be doing some of the same. He told her about his explorations of the city with Ellie, about the people he’d met and the card game he’d played with Nat. He told her about Harry and how much enjoyed the guard’s company; of how he’d saved him as a kid by the reservoir in that other body, and Harry had saved him in the Dugout Inn in this one. He told her about Myrna and her strange reaction when he’d introduced himself.

Nora had laughed at that.

He told her everything he’d thought about since waking in this new world and for a while, they compared notes. He told her he’d seen her kiss his other self that day at HQ and that he’d wanted to kiss her that first night they’d been back in the City. That he’d wanted to kiss her on the steps of the Old North Church. That he never thought he’d get to kiss her at all.

She told him how she’d woken up at HQ with John and Deacon at her side, and how, in that first moment, due to their expressions, she thought that Nick was dead. She told him how Amari had warned her off from telling him too much too soon. She told him she’d wanted to kiss him that evening on the steps of Old North Church, and that when she’d left for the war, she thought she might never get to kiss him again. 

As he made them dinner of brahmin steak and skewered tatos, he told her about Ellie’s attempts to teach him to cook. Nora told him how Ellie was always feeding her and that the one skill she most definitely didn’t have was preparing meals. They laughed as she told him of her failed attempts to learn from Ellie and he promised he’d work with her as he learned, because he couldn’t believe for a moment there was still something in the world she wasn’t good at.

They flipped through his old record collection as they sat in the living room after dinner; musing over old songs and missed songs and sharing a glass of bourbon. He told her about his police work in Chicago when they found his Frank Sinatra album; the first he’d bought and listened to when he’d become a detective. He told her about his life there, all the crime he’d fought against and the mobs. He told her about his favorite coffee shops and the truth behind how he’d met Jenny. 

He told her about the girl with the golden blond hair. About the society parties and the tux rentals and the newspapers always looking for something sordid going on. He told her how he regretted that she’d followed him to Boston and he told her of the months after her death trying to drown himself out in a bottle, before Mad Doctor Birk had given him a call with the promise of taking all his troubles away with a brainscan.

She asked him if he’d go back and change any of it now, as she’d once had to answer the same question for herself. He’d told her adamantly, no. They’d walked long and hard and lonely roads to get to Home Plate, but he told her he wouldn’t trade on any of it for all the world now.

They placed Jenny’s picture next to Nate and Shaun’s on the display table of the record player and laughed that they’d need a new picture of themselves together soon. They set the Sinatra album to play and cleaned up as Old Blue Eyes crooned, _I Won’t Dance_ , and Nora told him she’d always loved that song. They’d played it on the radio the day she’d moved into her apartment downtown with a balcony rose garden and about how she and her brother, Buster, had twirled around the empty space, covered in wall paint and laughing.

Near midnight, Nick asked if he could take her dancing sometime and it was so unexpected and his cheeks had been turning so red, Nora hardly had the heart to tell him the dance halls had all died out. He’d led her back into the living room when she did manage it, and they spun around the room to Sinatra instead. It had been a long while since either of them had danced like that, but they proved a capable team when pressed together to the music and they glided so effortlessly after a while, they made the steps look easy. Though Nick didn’t say anything to Nora about it, he finally knew they were a foxtrot, not a waltz, and while he might not be Fred Astaire, he could still hold his own with her beside him.

They forewent seeing the stars that night in favor of going back to bed, and what started as an innocent kiss ended up with Nora climbing atop his hips and Nick writhing under her in frustration, pleading with her name to go faster. She rode him slow and deep and easily and he gripped tightly to her hips, thrusting in time with her movements and desperate for release. When she’d leaned down to tease him with a kiss, he’d turned her head, pressed his lips to an ear and told her in no uncertain terms how he wanted her to fuck him, with _what_ and _where_. She’d rode him straight into the mattress afterwards, cheeks flushed and urging his hands to her breasts. 

Nick’s first thought as they lay sweating and tangled and satiated afterwards, was that a proper fella ought not to talk to angels like that. His second thought was that he couldn’t wait to do it again.

She ended up on his side of the bed by the wall when she’d finally rolled off him and as he gathered her back up to his chest and took her hand in his own to kiss, his fingers didn’t feel anything but her own. He paused in his action, a moment before he’d brought them to his lips.

Her ring wasn’t there.

“I lost it,” she said quietly, before he could ask.

And there was such sorrow there, a deep well of lamentation in those three little words, he’d held her close and kissed her forehead and listened as she told him about waking up without it on that roof.

“We looked for it afterwards,” she sighed. “Hell, I spent a whole day digging through the rubble on my own, but...it could be anywhere in that building now. Probably crushed under part of the roof.”

Her bare fingers traced delicate circles against his chest.

“It was always a little big on me. Didn’t think it would ever fall off with my gloves on, though,” she murmured. “I’m sorry, Nick.”

“It’s just a ring, Nora,” he whispered, catching hold of her hand again and pressing the kiss against it he’d meant to before. “We’ll...just find a new one. Where’d we get them the first time?”

“I made them,” she said, her tone still laced in mourning. “Sturges helped. Took all the silver I could find in salvage. He figured out the rest. It’s why mine was too big, I think. First try wasn’t as good as the second.”

She smiled shyly, fingering the silver she still wore on the leather band around her neck. 

“You seemed really happy about them though. It’s an old tradition here in the Commonwealth, but,” she sounded wistful. “I thought there was something special about it. Just something small that marked us as a matched set, I guess.”

Nick looked at her then. Really looked at her.

“Maybe it sounds silly, but I liked that people knew I was yours,” she shrugged. “And that you were mine. The _Valentines_.”

“Don’t think that’s silly at all,” he murmured. He brushed a strand of hair back and behind her ear, following it down it’s length until his hand ghosted against her skin. She sighed in contentment. “Kind of fond of that idea, myself.”

“Still have yours,” she held the ring up. “If you want it back.”

“Why don’t you keep it for now,” he closed his hand around hers. “So that the whole damn city remembers that you’re mine.”

“After this morning I don’t think anyone on the street could forget,” She smiled, that playful impishness back in her eyes. “But what about you? How will they know you’re _mine_?”

“Anybody with _eyes_ should know who I belong to, Doll,” he mused. “Your name’s right there on my office sign.”

“Even so...maybe I should have you screaming _my_ name by the door,” her tone was all smoke and starlight now. Her hand was already snaking underneath the covers; fingers brushing against him with feather-light promises. “Just in case.”

Nick shuddered as her hand encircled him. He suddenly wasn’t very tired at all anymore.

“Darling,” his voice dropped low; inviting. “You’re welcome to give it a try.”

“Then prepare yourself, _Detective_ ,” she purred, her hand stroking his length in slow and gentle tugs. “This is going to be a very _thorough_ investigation.”

“Sorry, _Barrister_ , I’ll never talk. You’ll just have to take me to trial,” he chuckled, then gasped as she stroked him firmly in spite of his words.

“You don’t have to talk, Mister Valentine,” she said, glancing at him provocatively through narrowed eyes. “I want you to _scream_.”

And as she threw back the covers and slid back over him, Nick had no doubt that he would.


	28. Sunlight Through the Shadows

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The week long hiatus is over! Thank you for being patient with me while I got my other work done! 
> 
> Just a few more chapters left! As always, comments are greatly appreciated. They kept me thinking about the story all week. : )

She greeted him, fresh from the shower, clad in those denim shorts of hers and one of his button downs. _Come and Go With Me_ by the Dell Vikings greeted him as it sang softly from the record player.

“How was it?” Nora asked, tossing the towel she’d been rubbing through her hair under the stairs.

“Long,” he sighed, untying the belt of his trench coat. “Kinda regret not letting you shoot him.”

“That bad, huh?” she smiled and slid her arms around him.

Nick sighed a second time; a contented exhale after a hard day’s work that only came once he was home and in her embrace once more. She was already rubbing deep circles along the tired muscles in his back beneath the trench. Her hand worked at a particularly painful knot beneath his left shoulder and he groaned his relief as he leaned into her. 

She smelled of tobacco and hubflowers mixed with roses; a scent he now knew by name after he’d helped her make the last batch of soap. Nick mimicked her actions, pressing his fingers along the length of her neck and up into her hair; a little more than desperate to reconnect with her skin after so many hours apart.

She tilted her head back and kissed him.

The light touch of her lips whispered against his; the kind of kiss she had given him that first time up on the roof. The kind of kiss he always looked forward to and that, a month and ten days on, still sent shivers racing down his spine. Not that he was counting, mind you. 

That first kiss turned into another, and then, one more. Slow, languid, relaxing kisses that cleared his mind of everything that lay beyond the red wood of their front door. The breaths she shared between met lips was a soothing balm for all that ailed him and he drank freely from her air to know that kind of calm in his soul that only she could bring. Goddamn, but she was good at this.

She smiled at him affectionately as they drew back, taking her amusement as she always did in the way Nick leaned into her even as she withdrew. His eyes were always half-lidded and still half-dreaming whenever their lips parted, the shy hint of a smile forming just a moment after, as if he’d realized he’d been caught in his love-dazed mannerisms. It was endearing, to say the least.

“If you’re gonna greet me like that every time I get home,” he chuckled. “Maybe, I should spent more time sorting out thugs down at the jailhouse.”

“I’d think once would be enough for you after all this,” she laughed, pulling him back with her and leading him up the stairs to their bedroom. “Got a little worried you might not make it back tonight.”

“Hell, you’re not the only one,” Nick rubbed a weary hand over his face as they ascended. It was nearly ten and the stars had long since come out for the evening. He’d been at the jail since a quarter to four. “I know they say Justice is blind, but she seems to have lost a few screws since the bombs as well.”

“Did they end up charging him?” Nora asked as she undid the buckles of his shoulder holster.

“On drug racketeering, _yes_ ,” he removed his hat, tossing it on the top of her dresser. “They fought me for the murder deal on account of him being such a _swell_ guy…”

“A swell guy who gave free beer to the city guards on Fridays,” she snorted. 

“Sad state of affairs in the world these days,” Nick shook his head and slid out of his trench coat so that Nora could pull of the holster. “Used to be, if a guy wanted to bribe you, he’d at least put a couple of C’s in your pocket while he was providing the hooch.”

“Not that you’d know anything about that,” she smirked, setting his gun down beside the fedora.

“Darling, I’ve always played it straight and narrow,” he chuckled. “Doesn’t mean they didn’t try.”

“That’s something I’d have liked to see,” she snickered. “So, the murder charge didn’t stick?”

“Oh, no,” Nick reassured her. “That bastard’s going away for good. He had the guards going for a while though. Tried to claim a headcase like me didn’t understand Diamond City law. Said it was self-defense or some nonsense like that, and that I was too mixed up these days to know better.”

That burned him more than anything about this case. What had started as a simple follow job on Paul Pembroke’s wife eventually blew up into their client getting himself killed and the murderer doubling down on the whole deal with an offer to cut the detectives in on his illicit drug ring; in exchange for their silence. Their adamant refusal of his goodwill gesture ended up with a firefight in the Colonial Taphouse and Nora nearly adding another body to her count. Nick had managed to take him down with a sharp slug to the shoulder before she could pop one in the man’s skull. Nora admonished him lightly for it on account of him having to give up cover to take the shot, but he could see the admiration in her eyes for his mercy, too. He’d understood why she’d have gone for the kill in that situation, but he was still a little gun shy about taking a life on his first big case since they’d reopened the office...even if the man _had_ deserved it. 

At the time, it’d looked like an open and shut deal. After a couple of nights tailing Mrs. Darcy Pembroke to the Taphouse and watching her leave with the barman, they’d established pretty quickly where Paul’s missus had been spending her evenings away from home. Mr. Pembroke hadn’t taken it well, as no one ever takes that kind of news ever well. Nick and Nora had accompanied Paul when he’d gone to confront Henry Cooke about sleeping with his wife, on account of the husband not acting in the altogether. They’d talked him down, too, when he’d pulled a gun. 

All in all, it might have ended there, but Paul was still riled up and Cooke wasn’t the type of man to take well to guns being shoved in his face. Before they could convince Paul to leave it and dust with them for a medicinal trip to the Dugout Inn, Cooke had put three slugs in the man with the pistol he kept hidden beneath the counter. Murder in cold blood didn’t even phase the thug; he’d cracked open a bottle of rum and started a yarn about drug money and a deal going down he’d cut them in on if only the detectives would help him out with the city guards once they came running.

It was one of the brashest moves Nick had ever seen a guy in that kind of situation make, and Nick had seen some brash moves by gangsters back in the day.

Nora was already flipping one of the heavy oak tables over for cover as Nick told the barman where he could stick it. The fight didn’t last long; Cooke wasn’t made for combat, just crime, and when the bullets stopped flying, he lay bleeding behind the bar. They’d walked him straight down to the Diamond City jail as Doc Sun showed up with Harry to deal with Paul’s body. 

No matter how many times he saw it, Nick still couldn’t get over the little jailhouse. It was a funny sort of security office, converted from one of the old dugouts, but it was par for the course when your city was constructed out of a ballpark. He wondered how many losing teams had sat in the same place before the iron bars had been put up for the new ones.

Once the head of security showed up and the paperwork started, Nick had convinced Nora to head back to the office without him. He figured she could start dealing with the widow while he wrapped up the whole murder mess; a benefit of having a partner now being that they could split the work and call off early. He also wasn’t fond of the way Cooke had been leering at her through the whole ordeal.

His hopes of an easy case and an early evening were dashed, however, as Cooke started in with his cockamamie headcase defense. Nick had fumed as the barman tried to play innocent all the while seeding discrediting ideas about the state of Nick’s mind and the lack of memory therein affecting his abilities as a lawman. It was an underhanded and dirty move and to make it all the more insulting, some of the guards had sympathized with him on it, looking at Nick as if he really did have a screw loose.

He’d argued with them for hours, all the while that smarmy bastard, Cooke, sat there rubbing salt in the wound. He’d nearly leapt across the table and strangled the man when he’d thrown in an insinuation involving Nora and just where she could go if Nick had “forgotten” how to please _that_ kind of girl.

The drug charges had been accepted no contest, but the murder charges, those had taken some work to make stick, even with the smoking gun lying right on the evidence table and two eye witnesses in broad daylight.

“I would have stayed with you, you know,” Nora was rubbing at his shoulders now to ease the tension there as he toed off his shoes. “Two against one is a stronger defense.”

“I know,” he rubbed at his face wearily. “But, they’ve gotta get used to me like _this_ sometime. Might as well be now...they’ll always be doubting me otherwise.”

“How’d you get them to change their minds?” she asked. Her hands were running up his neck now, working at the knots just under the skin there. It was distracting as much as it was a relief.

“ _Christ_ , that feels good,” he sighed and leaned back into her. “Took a few choice words and a threat to cuff the chief upside the head if he thought for a moment I didn’t know what a murder scene looked like. He backed off after, though; seems I cuffed him a good one when he was a kid and he hasn’t forgotten it.”

Nora laughed at that; the rumble in her smoke and her fingers working at the nape of his neck sending sparks down Nick’s spine.

“Not bad for your first case back in the City,” she said. “Busted a drug ring, a cheating wife and a murderer all in the same day and you’ve probably got the head of security afraid you’ll clip him upside the head the next time he crosses you.”

“The detective’s life is never dull,” he mused. Reaching into his trouser pocket, he removed the steel bracelets weighing against his leg. “Speaking of cuffs...never thought I’d be needing these again. Glad I kept the key.”

“We don’t _always_ shoot the bad guys,” Nora chuckled from behind him. 

“Just most of the time,” he tossed the handcuffs carelessly on the bed. “Certainly simplifies Due Process.”

“That’s Commonwealth justice for you,” she conceded. Her hands slid down his back to come around his waist again. “At least Henry Cooke won’t be bothering anyone again.”

“Certainly seemed like he wanted to bother with you,” Nick grumbled. “Practically crawled over the bar to get a good look at you that first night we checked out the Taphouse.”

It was a wonder they’d caught Darcy Pembroke in Flagrante Delicto at all the way her sidepiece had been trying to offer compliments and free drinks to Nora when they’d walked in. He’d all but propositioned her back to his place right there in front of Nick. 

“Mister Valentine,” his wife slid sensuously around his body until she was facing him. “You can’t possibly think I’d suffer that fool anywhere near my bedroom.”

“Why?” his voice dropped low, his fingers coming up to tangle in her hair. “You certainly suffer this one.”

“That’s entirely different,” she said smoothly. Her hand worked it’s way up his chest and back down the length of his tie. “You’re nobody’s fool and I’m in love with you.”

“Always be a fool for you, Doll,” He cocked a brow suggestively at her. She gave his tie a gentle tug in response. “What is it about this old four-in-hand and you anyway?”

“Dunno,” she grinned impishly, giving it another tug. “Maybe I just like leading you around by it.”

“That so? Well then, maybe you should wear it,” he noted suggestively, already working the silk knot loose. “Let me take the lead for awhile.”

“What’d you have in mind?” the corners of her lips pulled up slowly; intrigued. 

She was giving him the look now. The look that said they’d be naked and tangled up in one another the moment he reached for her. The look that said she wanted him right then and there. The look that Nick knew like the back of his hand after a month of coming home to a wife that seemed as desirous of him as he was of her at any given moment; be it the kitchen, shower or bedroom. 

He wondered, not for the first time, if it had always been like this between them; this gravity that was constantly pulling one to the other as if distance and clothes were anathema. He couldn’t remember any of the boys at the station house describing their relations like this; not with wives, girlfriends, or otherwise. Love and sex were just things to be born, sometimes enjoyed, sometimes lost; but never fully lived in. Nick was in a constant state of anticipation with Nora, connecting with hands, lips and bodies more often than not. They never seemed to break free from one another for long and when they came together again, it was always with a frantic need to close the distance the world forced between them. She’d set a storm in him that only her touch could calm. The perfect mix of grey to blue.

“You could murder a man with those bedroom eyes,” he murmured, taking her in as he always did, and wondering how he’d ever lived without knowing her.

“Better lock me up then, Detective,” she purred, looking him up and down. “Before I strike again.” 

Nick hissed through his teeth as she ran a palm over the front of his trousers, her fingers curling around him through the material and teasing. He eagerly met her touch, thrusting into her hand as his own fist tangled in her hair.

A giggle escaped her throat. The minx.

“Turn around for me,” he said, grabbing her hand and pulling it away from himself with a knowing look.

“Going to read me my rights?” she asked playfully, offering him her back.

He leaned in close to her ear as one hand slid up and around her, cupping her breast through the cotton of his button down. 

“You have the right to remain silent,” he breathed, intoxicated by her scent and the way she shivered at his words. “Though once we get going...feel free to waive that right.”

“Taking the law into your own hands tonight?” she gasped as his thumb raked over the rise of her nipple.

“Little Blind Justice seems appropriate in dealing with a dangerous girl like you,” He chuckled.

Releasing her breast, Nick lifted the length of his tie over her head, gently wrapping it around her eyes until they were covered, before knotting it behind one ear. 

“You’re too cunning for me. I guess I’ll have to surrender then,” she sighed dramatically. “Whatever are you going to do with me, Copper?”

“Take you in of course,” he chuckled, lifting her off her feet. Nora gasped and clung to him at the surprising motion.

“Do your worst,” she murmured. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she pulled herself close and kissed his cheek. It was one of those branding kisses of hers, placed just so and close enough to his ear it sent lightning down his neck.

Nick tossed her on the bed at that. Gentle enough that she’d not be hurt and rough enough so that she’d know he meant business.

“Ouch!” She laughed, startling him sober from passion’s haze. Before he could admonish himself, Nora reached beneath her hip and held out the handcuffs he’d tossed on the mattress. “Think you forgot these.”

A thought suddenly came to mind as he took them from her. 

“I did indeed,” he grinned broadly, though she couldn’t see it. “Thanks, Doll.”

Fishing the key out of his pocket, Nick flicked one cuff open and slid it around her slender wrist. 

“That wasn’t exactly what I meant,” she said with a smirk of amusement as he led her arm up to the metal poles of the headboard.

“You did say to lock you up,” he reminded her smoothly, leading her free hand up and locking it to the other with one of the metal posts in between. “Just following procedure here.”

“Gonna frisk me next?” her tone was full of mischief as she arranged herself oh-so-casually on the bed, stretching out the length of her torso and angling her legs in his direction. 

“Thinking about it,” he breathed out. His eyes took in the sight of her as he pulled his shirt tails free and began working the buttons. Halfway down, he stopped and rolled up his sleeves instead. 

There was something he’d been dying to try for a while now. Something he’d been too nervous and slightly embarrassed to act on previously; partially on account of how she had the habit of flipping tables on him and partially because it seemed so taboo, even his dreams of it had left him red in the face afterwards.

“Stop thinking,” Nora gently kicked out, the top of her foot catching the back of his thigh. “You’re supposed to be interrogating a dangerous criminal, remember?”

The games they got up to were ridiculous as they traded innuendo in place of foreplay, but it was enough of a fantasy to get Nick out of his head and back to the task at hand. 

“Ah, ah,” he shook his head, climbing onto the bed and over her. He knelt over her hips, running his hands down the length of the shirt she wore before his fingers started working free the buttons. “Gotta search you first. Could be hiding anything under here. Procedure and all that.”

“Tease,” she hissed as his fingertips whispered in a line down her skin.

“If you insist,” Nick flicked the last button free and threw open the shirt brusquely. She was bare underneath. He loved it when she was bare underneath.

He shifted position then, lying half over her and lowering his mouth to her pale breast. She gasped at the contact without visual context; back arching up and into him, inviting his attentions. Nick’s chuckle vanished below a deep moan as he drew his lips languidly over the soft swell of her flesh. 

She was supple and pliant and her skin so goddamned silken where the scars hadn’t managed to reach. Tongue dragging over her nipple, he suckled at it gently, teasing her with bare caresses until she was writhing beneath him in desperation for more contact. Each time he lapped at the rosy little mountain peak, the sounds that drew out of her throat sent him spinning. When she began to beg, he sucked at her like he meant it, groping her left breast in his palm and playing with her sensitive spots while he licked and nipped at her other. The sharp clink of metal against metal tinkled against his ears as she struggled to touch him in return, while the cuffs kept her at his mercy.

She groaned in frustration.

Nora wasn’t one to take things slow once she started to burn and Nick was torturing her in her pleasure now, he knew. He’d had weeks of practice with her under his hands to master his attacks and while she could still unravel him with a thought, he was steadily catching up in his handling of her. It was a perverse sort of thrill to know he could send her reeling; that he held this kind of power over her as she did with him. It made him feel confident and capable in a realm he’d only dreamed of being experienced enough in to take part.

“ _Nick_ —please!” she whimpered and wriggled beneath him. His tongue circled her nipple again in long firm strokes and her words became little more than breathy mindless moans.

“That’s _Detective_ Valentine to you, sweetheart,” he murmured, voice low in his throat and dripping with arousal. “Had enough yet? Or do I need to work you over some more?”

“Mmm,” she sighed raggedly. “More.”

His hand trailed down between them as his mouth returned to its work at her breast, following the dip in her abdomen as her panting breaths drew shallow the closer his fingers edged towards the waistband of her shorts. With thumb and forefinger, he flicked the brass button there loose and slid his hand beneath the material. A hoarse moan rumbled in his throat as his fingertips brushed the slick folds hidden beneath the denim; her hips jerking feverishly as he touched her. He stroked her twice more, each time delving deeper into the heated path of her slit, reveling in the feeling of her sex soaking his skin.

“Jesus, you’re so _wet_ ,” he gasped against her chest, drawing his hand back. Nora sobbed at the sudden loss, the meat of her thighs shaking when he pulled away. “Always so goddamned ready for me. Drives me right up the walls.”

“The do something...about it,” she panted, rolling her hips off the bed in search of him. “ _Please_ …”

He could hear the rapid thumping of her heart beneath his ear while he tried to calm his growing need to just strip them both the rest of the way and plunge himself within her heat. A few inches lower and she’d be grinding against him. A few inches more and he’d lose all self control and the chance to have a go at another fantasy he’d yet to fulfill.

“Nick?” she murmured, that soothing touch of concern coloring her smoke, even through the fog of her lust.

“I...want to try something,” he confessed quietly, kissing the freckled skin beneath his cheek in lieu of asking permission. “Something different.”

She stilled beneath him and he worried she’d reject his request, though she’d never denied him anything before. It was only a momentary pause on her part though and she quickly shifted beneath him to get better purchase beneath her hips. Rather than rolling them up and against him, she slid her knees up his sides, looping her ankles around his backside and resting them there. It was an act of comfort given where her arms couldn’t reach.

“Hey Valentine,” she murmured her love song to him in her most enticing tone. It was all smoke and promises over the night water of a still lake in the summer. “You can do _anything_ you want to me. I’m yours, remember? Take pleasure in that.”

She grinned wickedly at him, made doubly so by the length of his tie wrapped around her eyes and blocking her vision. 

“ _I_ certainly do,” she purred. “ _Detective_.”

“They threw out the rule book when they made you, Doll,” he chuckled. Climbing up the length of her, he captured her mouth in a deep and heady kiss; one she struggled to maintain and lean into as his tongue swept against hers in the echo of Nick’s satisfied moan. “You tell me if I do something you don’t like.”

“There’s nothing you do that I don’t like,” she pecked him on the lips, catching the smile he now wore. 

“That so?” he crooned.

If his angel wasn’t worried about what he wanted to do to her, then neither was he. He took his time sliding back down her body, leisurely leaving a trail of kisses in his wake; down the silk column of her neck, over the swell of her breasts, down the ripple of muscle over ribs, along the path to her hip. She was still and waiting in anticipation beneath him, he could tell; her breaths frail. His hands gripped the sides of her leading his mouth and memorizing her every warm curve until they hit the edge of her denim. He left his business with her only long enough to drag them down and away from her legs. She wasn’t wearing anything beneath.

“You seem to have forgotten something, Darling,” he said, voice thick and cracked from want.

“They’d only end up on the floor with you, anyway,” she laughed, before the sound melted away into a moan as his lips brushed the rifle burn scar on her left hip. “Easier...access…”

“Half the fun’s pulling them off. Not that I’m complaining mind you,” he chuckled and sucked at her skin. His tongue ran over the little black heart inked into her hip. He loved that little mark. Nick stopped before he branded it with his kiss. It looked _different_ tonight, and it sent new waves of adoration aching through his chest as he took in the changes. “When’d you sneak this in?”

“Like it?” she smirked. “Doctor Sun fixed it up for me earlier today. Felt like celebrating the success of your first case since we got back.”

“It’s perfect,” he whispered, admiring the addition of the little cupid’s arrow along the heart’s edges. “Definitely matches the sign.”

“Nobody should question who I belong to now,” she laughed softly.

“Nobody should be seeing it besides me, anyway,” he growled and nipped at her.

“Possessive man,” she chuckled. 

“Darling, you have no idea,” he rumbled dangerously. 

“Then clue me in, Mister Valentine,” she hummed.

“Gladly,” he snarled.

The first touch of his tongue against her sex sent a jolt of surprise and pleasure straight to her core and Nora yelped despite herself. Nick lapped at the liquid heat dripping between her thighs like a man desperate for water in an oasis. He groaned in satisfaction as the aggression he’d started with dissolved into realization; he’d dreamed of having his mouth on her for so long and the reality of it sent his mind swimming. 

She tasted so damned sweet on his tongue and the manic cries from her lips that sounded each time he ran the length of her was music. He hooked his arms under her thighs and lifted her legs up over his shoulders, cupping her hips and driving them up and into his mouth as he lapped at her with intoxicated enthusiasm. The slick wet noise echoed in his ears as he licked her and Nick was convinced in that instant that nothing more erotic had ever existed in the world. He pressed against her entrance and sucked at the little nub to its North, enthralled by the way she wailed each time he did so. He circled the tip of his tongue around that button experimentally and she went wild in his arms, thrashing and crying out and straining against the pull of his handcuffs. 

His name fell from her lips in sweet pleas and begging whines, over and over again, she called out to him. He wanted to see her fall apart like this, with his open shirt still embracing her arms and his mouth working between her sopping curls like a devoted man in prayer. He lost himself in the depravity of wanting her this way, sucking and lathing his tongue around that little nub of slick flesh with a hunger he’d never known. He felt like a sinner debauching her heavenly body with such an act and that thought alone was so arousing in the moment, he’d nearly come in his trousers.

She broke fast and hard against his tongue, keening his name in a sharp wail as her pleasure spiked and crashed and sent her to pieces. He was too far gone in that instant to remember undoing his trousers. Too far gone to remember shoving them down his hips before entering her still shuddering body in one quick, rough thrust. Too far gone to remember the filthy words that slipped out of his mouth between gasps of air and her name and his own cry of completion as he pumped his hips sharply against hers and poured himself out into her. 

He’d never even gotten his shirt off.

Nick stayed there for more than a heartbeat, eyes closed and fingers still gripped tightly into her hips where he remained; buried. His heart was beating hard and angry against the interior of his ribs, gnashing at the bones to be set free. He could stay there forever now. He’d be content to die in the apex of her thighs and her gasping breath of his name haunting his ears.

The soft scrape of metal against metal brought him back to his senses and the euphoria was replaced with a small pang of guilt for not immediately releasing her. He slid out of her slowly and replaced her shaking hips to the bed with gentle care, before resetting his trousers well enough he could access the pocket with the key.

Nora didn’t say anything as he reached up to unlatch the locks. She simply breathed beneath him in deep, agitated heaves of her chest. She was always like this after he’d let himself go with her. After the intensity of their shared passions became overwhelming. Knowing it didn’t make the knot of worry that always arose in his chest in the aftermath any better, however, and he waited anxiously for the smile she’d eventually grace him with when her head came back down from Heaven. 

The act was too new and Nick too raw from desire to mask his impatience for her approval, however. He rubbed gently at the soft skin on the underside of her wrists as he moved them back down to her sides before attacking the knot in his tie with nimble fingers and sliding it away from her with care, desperate to see the blue of her eyes against his own. She kept them closed, long after the silk had been taken from them.

Nick slid his palm against the side of her cheek, up and into her dark hair, soothing her even as his own breaths still came unevenly. She leaned into his touch with a satisfied little hum. Nora did open her eyes then; turned those blue skies straight on him and grinned like the impish devil she was under the sweet guise of a Heavenly Host.

“You can work me over like that, anytime, _Detective_ Valentine,” she winked at him.

Relief flooded through Nick as it always did and he gathered her up into his embrace to bask in the afterglow with her.

“That good, eh?” he mused, rubbing the life back into her arms.

“You have a talent with that tongue of yours,” she curled into him, content as a cat. “For more than just words.”

“As long as you think so, Doll,” he sighed in elation.

“As long as I’m the only one who ever gets to know so,” she beamed, despite her warning.

“Possessive thing,” he chuckled.

“You have no idea,” she reached up and drew his mouth to hers in a kiss that proved her point.

Nick took back his earlier thoughts. _This_ was the most erotic thing the world had ever known, as they shared her taste between them. He groaned and arched into her. She’d ruined him now. There would only ever be her for him and he’d follow her like a loyal hound for the rest of their days. He might as well let Doc Sun brand him with her wings. Nick was Nora’s in every way that counted.

“Can I interest you in a shower and a nightcap before bed, Mrs.Valentine?” he smirked as they withdrew, already pulling her to follow him and steadying her until her legs stopped shaking.

“Haven’t heard that one before,” she laughed. “You’re usually more clever with your lines.”

“I’m out of form tonight,” he grumbled. “Must be a little tongue tied on account of my wife. She’s a hot piece if ever there was one. Always burns me to the core.”

“Well, consider me seduced, Shamus,” she kissed him again for good measure. “Get your ass in that shower and soap me up.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he gave a jaunty salute, leading their charge to the bathroom.

It was another hour before they were clean and warm and had managed to keep their hands to themselves long enough to finish getting washed up. Nick wrapped a towel around his waist and went hunting for the brandy while Nora got her hair sorted. They toasted another day in their pockets and another memory for the collection plate as they clinked their carnival glass tumblers and downed their drinks.

She’d pulled him back up the stairs again as his hands began to wander over her backside with little else to occupy them once the brandy was gone. Despite his enthusiasm and her excitement, the day’s adventures finally caught up with them and they reluctantly settled in for sleep over another round of their daily duels. 

Not that sleep was any sort of burden now, mind you. Nick hadn’t been joking when he’d told Nora nearly a month earlier that laying beside her had brought him the greatest rest he’d ever known. She was warm and naked and wonderful in his arms and when the lights went out and their kisses faded into soft breaths and slow heartbeats, he let himself go in the knowledge she’d still be there when he woke up. And despite every kiss and exploration they made of each other, the simple act of sleeping with her, of holding her through the night, was the most intimate things he’d ever known.

There’d been a time when Nick had truly considered himself a morning person, up before the birds and to work with the sun. Now though, since the world ended and he’d found his happiness waiting for him behind a red wood door in Diamond City, he preferred the pale light of the stars and the late nights spent dreaming of the next day he’d get to spend with his wife.

As sleep took him in its gentle caress, with Nora’s heartbeat guiding the way, Nick lay beside her, in their bed at Home Plate, and dreamed.

He dreamed of the tiny apartment, near the waterfront off Monroe and Third. He dreamed of waking to the smell of coffee and the roses from her makeshift garden. He dreamed of her sitting in the big bay window, wearing that cream colored dress with the faded pink rosettes dotting the thin material.

She sat waiting for him, the sunlight streaming in behind her. The spent butt of one of his clove cigarettes lay smoking in the blue carnival glass ashtray on a nearby bookshelf.

But the room…

The room was different.

The little living room with the dark leather couch and the small coffee table and bookshelves; he’d remembered it being so empty before, but now? Now it was full up of scattered items, clothing and pictures. 

Clocks sat on _every_ surface keeping perfect time, tattered Nuka Cola adverts were Wonderglued to the walls and peeling, a beaten up cardboard box full of old vinyl sat near a long record player covered with photographs, a pack of playing cards with pin-ups painted on them lay open and spread on the coffee table, with only two cards facing up; the two of hearts and its ace. Hubflowers and yellow carrot blooms mixed in with the roses, colored Christmas lights lined the ceiling, a stuffed monkey in an astronaut suit sat on the couch with a coffee mug and a bottle of bourbon with a red wax seal stamped with a big gold “C”, and on one wall a neon pink heart with a cupid’s bow flickered where it’d been plugged in. 

Ten holotapes were lined up neat-as-you-please on one of the bookshelves, the books below it in a myriad of conditions from pristine to water-stained. A pair of glasses and a bottle of wine sat in an old wooden office chair beside a bouquet of flowers and green glass desk lamp. The quilt from the Red Rocket lay half finished on the floor, scraps of colored fabric cut out and waiting to be sewn in. A bowl of silver keys sat shining on his end table and on the couch lay a ragged looking trench coat, worn well-beyond its years and stained and holding something blue.

The fingers of his good hand brushed over the material. It was soft and just a little bit leathery and it reminded him of the damn monkey suit Dr. Birk had stuffed him in before he’d put him in that pod and told him to sleep. This one was lacking the C.I.T logo on the back, however. In it’s place, a dirty set of yellow numbers was printed in plain bold text: 111.

As he lifted it to get a better look, he recoiled in something like horror. The front of the blue suit was covered in old blood stains; deep, ugly rusty-red splotches that would never come clean now.

“Nora,” he called out, turning to the woman sitting in the window.

“Hey Valentine,” she smiled warmly, her love song full of smoke and just a little something like longing; the kind of song you hear on the radio on Saturday nights after dropping off your girl at home and wishing you’d have stayed the night with her. “Sleep well?”

“Think I’m still sleeping, to be honest,” he set the blue material back into the embrace of the tattered trench coat and stepped towards her. “What...what is all this?”

“It’s your _life_ , Nick,” she said breezily. “Don’t you remember it?”

“I’m trying to,” he confessed, glancing around. “The memories just won’t come back. They’ve stopped coming back...like I hit a roadblock or something.”

“Why do you think that is?” she asked softly.

“I wish I knew, Doll,” he shook his head sadly. 

“I happen to know you’re a pretty great detective,” she murmured, gesturing to the room. “Can’t you figure it out?”

“I dunno,” his eyes scanned the room and the many odd objects therein. “It’s a lot to take in. Don’t suppose you could throw me a clue?”

“It’s a lock,” she replied gently. “A memory lock.”

Nick frowned at her, trying to imagine what a lock like that might look like. 

And then he saw it; sitting there beside her ashtray on the bookshelf, a hairsbreadth away from the edge of sunlight cast by the window.

Nick warily took the steps needed to cross over to it, standing in front of Nora now, as he reached beyond the sunlight and retrieved the lock from the shadows it sat in. It was a strange sort of thing; a palm-sized coiled wire attached to what looked to be some kind of computer drive. Though the coil of wires had probably once been circular in shape, someone had pressed the middle down, until the coil bent, folding the opposite end of the wires into a soft “V”. In the center of the black drive; a keyhole.

“Lola,” he snorted, remembering Tom’s name for it. The thin metal fingers of his bad hand trailed the coil of wires thoughtfully. “Seems like this was the start of my troubles. Too bad they can’t just plug me back in and sort this all out the easy way. Not much use for a mechanical heart now though.”

“He thinks so, too,” she said, and her smoke was wistful and sad as it rolled out from her lips.

“What do you mean, Doll?” Nick turned to her. His heart broke at the look she wore just then; the kind of look you see on a girl when her best guy left her standing in the street, under the stars, alone in the rain. Nick sat down beside her carefully, stroking his good hand through the silk of her hair in comfort. “Hey, now, there’s no need for that. I’m right here. We’ll figure this out, together. Just talk to me.”

She sighed heavily. The kind of sigh that comes when you know you’ve lost something important. The kind of sigh that comes when you regret losing something you may never have again.

“If you were a machine, if you _knew_ you were a machine,” she leaned into his hand, bringing her own up against it. “Where would that leave you?”

“But I’m not a machine, sweetheart,” he murmured, the fans in his chest whirring. “Not really.”

“You _knew_ you were a synth,” she said, blue eyes trailing the damage to his throat. “Dreaming of living another man’s life and wishing for a chest filled with more than tubes and wires. You wanted _her_ to see you as a _man_ , a _real_ one. Not the clockwork facsimile.”

“And now I am,” he reminded her, gently taking her free hand into his metal one. “I _am_ that man now, the _real_ one. She... _you_ have me as a real one now.”

“So, why would she still need the _other_?” she asked softly. “The one who’s love was coded somewhere in 1’s and 0’s.”

“Because we’re the same man,” he insisted, feeling the coolant pumping hard in his chest now. “We’re the _same_.”

“But what if you _didn’t_ know that,” she looked up at him. There was fear in those eyes. Worry. 

“I _do_ know it, Doll,” he said adamantly, the glow of his yellow eyes reflecting in her soft blue. “I promise you, I _know_.”

“ _He_ doesn’t,” she shook her head. “He never got the chance to.”

Nick was taken aback by her words.

“He _loved_ her the same as you, you know that?” she lamented. “He cherished every _memory_ they built together, because they _weren’t_ the memories of another man’s life. They were _his_ and his _alone_.”

Nora reached out and gently took Lola from Nick’s grasp. The moment the small device was in her fingers, it lit up with a soft yellow glow and began to hum. It was a tinkling, mechanical little song, not unlike the chiming of a music box. It sounded a lot like that Jackie Wilson number. 

Nora held the little device as it sang for her like she was holding a most delicate and precious piece of glass. Adoration was in her eyes now. Adoration and something that looked a lot like love.

“He wanted to be a man, but he was still just a _machine_ ,” she explained, stroking the little wire heart affectionately. “A machine _wanting_ to be a man. Wanting for _her_ to _see_ him as a _real_ man. It’s all he ever wanted. It’s still what he wants.”

She held Lola close to her chest now and looked back up at Nick.

“He knew someday she’d walk off with another man,” She murmured and stroked the tattered edge of his jaw lovingly. “That someday, they’d have to part ways, and that he’d send her off with a new husband, for a new life. He didn’t want to stand in the way of her happiness.”

“You can’t mean me,” he exhaled sharply. His mind was racing over what she was trying to tell him. 

All this time, he’d assumed he was the problem. That he, _himself_ , was the reason he couldn’t remember. That there was something wrong with _him_.

He’d never considered the part of him that he’d lost, the man he used to be, didn’t want to be found.

Nora smiled wistfully at him.

“You’re everything he ever wanted to be. A man with two hands and a heartbeat and a life he could give to her. A _real_ life. But those _memories_ you want so badly, those memories he won’t _give_ you,” she sighed sadly; regretful. “Those are still _his_. If you take them, then he’ll have nothing left.”

“But we’re the _same_ man, dammit,” Nick argued. He could feel the familiar ache swelling deep in his chest; the same one that had haunted his days before that night on the rooftop. “It’s not a competition anymore.”

“He doesn’t know that,” she slowly held up her left hand, showing him the back of it. Her silver ring was missing. He knew, because she’d told him once she’d lost it. “There’s been a disconnection. He only knows what you _have_ and what he _had_. He doesn’t understand they could be one in the same. That you’re both playing cards from the same deck.”

“How can we fix it?” he begged, pulling her hands to his chest where the coolant ran erratically. He was desperate for answers now. He was desperate for those memories of that other man. Desperate to share his own, so that other man would know that, he too, was no longer alone. “How do I get him to understand he’s not any different from me. That we could share this life?”

“Find the connection point between you,” she murmured, her fingers spreading against his chest and sliding up to his shoulders. “The thing that ties _both_ your lives together. The thing you both _recognize_ as starting yours.”

“ _Nora_ ,” he breathed her name. His ring wasn’t on the leather strip around her neck; and in it’s place, a tiny silver key. The bow was shaped like a heart. A heart with a cupid’s arrow through it. “It _has_ to be you. My life only starts and ends with _you_.”

She smiled at him. That loving smile she gave him every morning. That loving smile she gave him whenever he was lost. Her gentle fingers were urging him toward her now and he brought his good hand back up to tangle in her hair.

“Do you know why you dream about me in the _sunlight_ , Nick?” she asked softly. “Do you know why I’m forever _here_ , waiting for you?”

“No,” he confessed as she drew his lips to hers.

“It’s because you’ve always been _looking backwards_ ,” she whispered against his mouth. “Hoping to catch a glimpse of sunlight through the shadows one more time.”

She pressed her lips to his and Nick felt his drives spinning madly as her fingertips trailed over the ruined skin behind his ear. Her lips tasted of coffee and his clove cigarettes and when she brushed her tongue against his, he swore he caught the sweet tang of roses.

It made him think of the night he went out for drinks with her older brother. It made him think of the girl Buster had told him about; a girl who lived in an apartment downtown and not that far from Nick’s. A girl who loved books and grew roses and who practiced law in her spare time when she wasn’t dreaming of a guy she could share her spaces with. A girl who Buster thought had been kind of lonely and whose phone number he’d written down for Nick on a bourbon stained napkin. A girl who Buster thought Nick might find some commonality in.

A girl Nick had been too afraid to call, because he’d known if he did, a bay window and a room full of books might not have been enough for him anymore. 

“I think I’ve been in love with you my whole damned life,” he gasped longingly between kisses. “You’re everything I wanted in a girl. You’re all I _ever_ wanted.”

“So find the connection,” she murmured, kissing that sweet spot beneath the tear in his jaw. “And stop dreaming about this life when you could be living it.”

“Nora..,” her name fell from his lips, pleading with her for some kind of release.

He could feel the ache of coolant pumping through his heart now, as his hand slid out of her hair towards the leather strap around her neck.

He reached for the silver key.

The sharp knock on the door downstairs woke him up.


	29. Deep Breath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is long. I did end up splitting it once it hit 34 pages.
> 
> Comments are more than welcome and I truly apologize if I missed some errors. I gave up going through it for a third editing pass to get onto the next chapter. -_-
> 
> Also, are you guys okay with the sex scenes? I never know if people actually like them or not, but I don't want to ditch out on them as it's a big part of their relationship.

Nick glared groggily into the darkness. 

It didn’t feel like he’d slept long.

Beside him, Nora stirred and then turned into him; asleep. The time on her Pip-Boy read just after midnight.

For a moment, all was silent. For a moment, Nick wondered if he’d just been dreaming.

The knock came a second time; louder and more urgently. He felt his wife stir again; this time awake.

“Is that the door?” Nora mumbled sleepily into his chest.

“I’ll check it out,” he murmured, leaning down to kiss her forehead. He untangled himself from her arms and from the sheets and stumbled to his feet, retrieving a pair of his old blue and white striped pajama pants from the floor.

“What time is it?” she rolled over, blue eyes made bluer yet and illuminated as she squinted against the light of her oversized clock.

“Still night,” he said soothingly. “You rest, sweetheart.”

The knock came a third time, loud and sharp and waking. The haze Nick had felt only moments ago lifted, replaced by a mixture of anticipation and wariness. The sort of feeling he’d gotten every time he’d been waiting with a S.W.A.T team outside a warehouse for the word “Go”. 

He reached under his trench coat on her dresser and retrieved his pistol from the holster before making his way downstairs and to the door. He could hear the sheets sliding back softly from up in the loft and he was sure Nora was on her feet now as well.

Nick drew a breath, keeping the pistol out of sight, just behind his leg. He twisted the silver knob with his left hand, prepared to draw quickly with his right as he pulled the door open.

Harry stood on his doorstep, hand raised and ready to knock again; startled.

“Harry?” Nick blinked in confusion. “Afraid it’s a bit late to drink for me tonight. What’s wrong? You need something?”

“Aw, jeez,” Harry cringed. “I’m sorry ta have to wake ya, Nick. Truly I am, but this fella showed up at the gates and said he needed to see Mrs. Valentine. That it was an emergency. You two are usually night owls so I figured I might still catch ya up. I’m real sorry…”

“It’s fine, Harry,” Nick shook his head. “Don’t worry about it.”

Harry nodded and stepped back, his giant size no longer masking the short ghoul standing behind him. Nick didn’t recognize him, hadn’t met many ghouls yet in his travels, but there was something about him that seemed _familiar_. He was well dressed in a three-piece pin-striped suit that looked like it still had a flower pinned to it that had been there long before the bombs fell. A ratty looking fedora sat low and angled on his scarred head and a tommy gun twitched in his fingers; the barrel was angled low and towards the ground. He had eyes like General Deegan, the kind that still had color to them, though the whites had long since been dyed red, making the green of his irises pop brightly, even in the shadows of the night. He looked nervous to Nick. Like he was nervous to speak with Nick.

Strange.

“What’s the trouble, pal?” Nick asked casually.

“Is, uh, is the lady of the house at home?” he coughed, his voice deep and rough and as equally scarred as his nose-less face.

“That you, Oscar?” Nora’s voice drifted out of the dark behind Nick a moment before she stepped up beside him. She had his undershirt from earlier pulled on over her denim shorts.

The ghoul seemed immediately relieved, ignoring Nick now in favor of Nora.

“Sorry to bother ya, Kitty-Cat,” he offered with a depreciated shrug. “But Fahrenheit sent me.”

“It’s never a bother, Oscar,” she assured him warmly, though Nick could hear an edge of _something_ in her voice now. Something that sounded like worry. “Just give us a minute and we’ll be right out.”

The ghoul nodded as Nora took the door from Nick and shut it. Before he could ask, she was already on the move, stripping out of his undershirt as she climbed the stairs.

“Nora?” he called after her and followed.

“Come on, get dressed,” she said quickly, already rummaging through her drawers and pulling out clothes. “We have to go.”

“Go where?” he asked, setting his pistol down on the dresser top and watching her slid the shorts off in favor of undergarments.

“To Goodneighbor,” she breathed, clasping a bra around her back. 

She was shaking.

“Clue me in a little more here, Doll,” he stilled her movements with a gentle hand to her shoulder. “What’s the emergency?”

“It’s John,” she murmured and there was a break in the smoke of her voice that disturbed him. “He needs us right now.”

Nick wasn’t sure how she knew that by the conversation he’d just witnessed downstairs, but he knew that whatever she was on about right now had upset her. He smoothed the hair back and away from her face, holding her gaze with his own in what he hoped was reassurance.

“Then we’ll get a move on,” he promised her. “You gonna be alright?”

“Sorry, yeah, it’s just,” she sighed raggedly, leaning into his palm and pressing it against her cheek. She needed something to ground her right now and Nick could actually see her pulse racing as the blood ran through her neck. “It’s just been awhile since...since he’s needed us like this. I promise, I’ll explain everything on the road. We just have to go...please.”

“You sure you want me with you on this one?” he asked quietly, stroking her skin with his thumb.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve done this run without you,” she murmured. “If you...if you don’t mind going.”

She wasn’t leaving him behind this time. Not if he didn’t want her to.

“Then I’m going,” he leaned in and kissed her forehead again. “No more waiting for me. I’ll follow wherever you lead.”

“You..,” she shook her head with a disbelieving smile. “Thank you, Nick.” 

Her arms came around him, and for a moment, he just held her there, stroking her hair and offering her whatever support he could give. Whatever she was so worried about right now, he’d have her back. He’d make whatever nightmare lay behind those blue skies of hers into a dream come morning.

“Come on,” he said gently, pulling back. “Let’s get out of here. John needs us.”

She nodded and reached for a pair of tattered jeans, as Nick searched through his own drawers for a fresh set of kit. She’d pulled on a threadbare t-shirt, her sneakers and that leather jacket of hers by the time Nick was tucking his button down into a pair of trousers. She tossed him his belt and pistol holster as he knotted his grey-blue tie, strapping her own iron on to her leg.

“You expecting a firefight?” he asked, sliding his arms into the holster.

“No,” she shook her head, digging through a small chest near the end of the bed and retrieving her postman’s bag and a good sized grey blanket. “But there’s more chance for ferals to be out hunting at this time of night. Might need ‘em if we run into any out there on the road.”

“I’ll be ready,” he assured her. He slipped on his trench coat and knotted the belt loosely around his middle.

“I know you will,” she smiled back at him, tossing him his fedora.

Nick slid the hat on over his hair, grinning. Woe be it to any feral that dared to step into their path tonight. He’d make short work of them with his wife’s confidence at his back.

He watched her empty the few items still in her bag, stuffing the blanket into its hold, before adding in a handful of stimpaks, a small tin of Mentats, and an inhaler that looked suspiciously like the kind that held Jet. Nick still wasn’t a fan of chems after he’d seen her lying in that hospital bed, but he didn’t question why she thought they might need them. For all he knew, they were for John.

“Anything else?” Nick asked, shoes tied and ready to go.

“Grab a bottle whiskey from our stash,” she nodded back towards the kitchen downstairs. “Something good.”

Nick headed down the stairs, even as he wondered what sort of help John needed from them that involved a Midnight whiskey run. He was about to step out with Nora for their first real adventure, however, and whatever it was, he decided he’d just run with it. He pulled a bottle of his favorite rye out of the cupboard, still sealed with wax and untouched. He slid it into the bag space she’d left for the liquor when she appeared beside him and with a nod of approval, the pair head for their front door.

Both Harry and the ghoul turned to face them from their conversation as Nick and Nora stepped out of Home Plate.

“He, uh..,” Oscar looked warily at Nick again. “He coming along, too? Word on the street’s he’s been a bit... _different_ lately.”

Nick tensed, prepared for a fight and still a bit sore from his experience at the jailhouse, but Nora eased him back down with a touch of her hand to his wrist.

“He’s good for it,” she reassured the ghoul.

“Just so long as he remembers the _rules_ ,” Oscar nodded. “You know Fahrenheit will have my head if any of this gets out.”

The detective in Nick was already cataloguing the evidence into piles as it grew, and much like Nora, he was beginning to worry about John Hancock. John had been a good pal to him at HQ and the thought of a man so confident and brash suddenly calling for their aide in the middle of the night wasn’t sitting well. He wondered what was wrong.

He watched as Nora locked their house with her silver key before slipping the white synth-skin heart back into her pocket. He’d been... _dreaming_ of a silver key earlier, now that he thought about it. It seemed important at the time...before he’d been woken by the door.

“Ya want me to let Ellie know you’ve stepped out?” Harry asked helpfully as the small group made their way to the front gate. “Cause ya know how she gets to worryin’ and all when you dicks ain’t where she can see ya.”

“That’d be swell of you, Harry, thanks,” Nick shook his hand. “But maybe save it till morning, would ya?”

“Oh, sure, sure,” he nodded. “How long should I say you guys’ll be gone for?”

“Not long,” Nora assured him. “Maybe just tonight. Couple of days at most.”

“Alright, I’ll let her know,” he grinned as they stood before the City gates. “You take care out there now. The Minutemen done a pretty good job keepin’ the raiders and the gunners out, but lotta bad stuff still out there in the dark. Never know whatcha might run into.”

“Yeah,” Nora grimaced, thinking about another time and place where bad things had filled the darkness. Nick didn’t miss that look. “Better safe than sorry.”

“I’ll take lead,” Oscar said in that scratchy rumble of his. “Didn’t see any ferals on the way in, but you never know.”

“Wouldn’t it be safer to stick together?” Nick asked as they walked out and into the Fens, waving back at Harry as he watched them go. 

“The ferals won’t bother with Oscar,” she murmured back, sliding her hand into his. “Dunno why, but they don’t ever mess with other ghouls.”

“Good reason to be a ghoul,” Nick mused. Much as he’d been gunning to take some on earlier, in this ruined city without lights, he wasn’t as anxious to do so now. The streets were thick with shadows under the pale light of the stars and the waning moon. It’s be a hard fight without better vision to direct his bullets. 

The walk to Goodneighbor wasn’t far from what Oscar and Nora told him, but it was still a good 45 minutes before they’d make it to the gates on foot. Plenty of time for Nick to spook himself over shadows in the dark. He wondered at the ease with which both Nora and the gun ghoul carried themselves through the rubble-strewn streets, as if they’d each made the trip a thousand times and the darkness didn’t bother them any more than if it’d been daylight. He knew they were watching their edges though. He knew they were prepared. They just didn’t seem afraid.

For as much as he’d seen of the world in the daytime hours, Nick had been spared the _experience_ of a night-crawl through the ruins. He’d been through some dangerous places in his lifetime with nothing but a pistol to arm him, but this was something else entirely. His whole body was tensed and ready to run at a moment’s notice and though he tried not to show his sudden fear, he felt Nora stroking small and calming circles into his palm. He felt a bit guilty now for tagging along, even as he refused to go back. All the bravado he’d had earlier was gone in that darkness. He couldn’t imagine walking these streets by himself, let alone holing up in one of the wrecked buildings for the night; with a group of friends or otherwise.

He glanced down at his wife as she walked beside him, her stride smooth and her back straight. She didn’t seem to be afraid of these streets now and he wondered if she’d ever been. He wondered how she’d ever made it to Diamond CIty in the first place, walking all the way from Concord on her own. He wondered how many nights she’d spent alone in this new world and how she’d ever managed to survive them.

She seemed too small in that leather jacket of hers just then. Too small and too delicate to be moving with such purpose through these dark streets. He wondered how long it’d taken for her to lose her fear and he wondered now if he’d someday manage the same. The blue of her eyes flickered brightly even through the shadows; quick and clever and determined. He could see her now leading armies. He could see now why she bore so many scars.

He suddenly had a whole new level of appreciation for his angel of a wife.

The stories her friends and the people of the City told didn’t do her justice. He needed another word for her then beautiful. She was a force to be reckoned with. 

“Cap for your thoughts,” she murmured and even the low smoke of her voice seemed like a bellow in the silence of the night.

“Just thinking about you, Doll,” he said soft as he could, worried about how far his sound might carry and what it could attract. “Wonderin’ how you survived so long out here before we met.”

“We met in that house under the wisteria tree,” she reminded him with a gentle squeeze of his fingers in her own.

“Well, when we met up here again, I mean,” he conceded. “Seems like a long, dark road to wander by yourself.”

“I wasn’t always alone,” she smiled up at him. “And it was hard when I was...I won’t lie about that, but, in a strange way, you get used to it. You just have to.”

“Guess the alternative’s not a terribly attractive option if you like breathing,” he mused.

“The first night out here is always the hardest. You don’t know what’s out there, you don’t know what might hurt you when you’re not looking yet but,” she looked at him as they walked now. There was an earnestness in her tone. A reassurance. “You will get used to it, Nick, I promise. It just takes time...and a little trust when you have someone to watch your back.”

“Glad you’ve got mine then,” he gave her hand a squeeze. “Much as I hate to admit it, being out here like this gives me the willies. Thought I was too old to get those anymore.”

She laughed and for a moment, that sound alone relaxed him, loud as it seemed.

The growl that responded from Nora’s right, however, immediately put him back on edge. His wife was already moving.

“Oscar!” she shouted, releasing Nick’s hand in favor of taking up her gun. “Light!”

“I’m on it!” the gun ghoul called back drawing a bottle from beneath his coat and flicking open a lighter.

From under the shadowy shape of an old rusted Highwayman, Nick could see something struggling to move. In the darkness they were bathed in, they were just shadows crawling in shadows. He didn’t need to see them to remember the twisted sound of their growls. The hissing, burble that sounded just a little bit human and a whole lot not. It reminded him of walking into the Atrium of the C.I.T with the Railroad group, when they’d stumbled into that stinking nest of ferals and the walls had begun to move around them; unearthly moans and ruined throat snarls filling their ears.

The fear that gripped him shattered with the bottle Oscar had thrown just behind the car. A wall of flames illuminated the street where the Molotov had exploded: There were ferals crawling around in that darkness all right. Ten or so left by the looks of the ones not dropping from the fire.

They were just as horrifying as Nick remembered them to be and his body urged him to run.

Nora’s little hand cannon popped off three shots in rapid succession, and down went an equal number of writhing bodies to match. To their side, Nick could hear the rata-tat repetition of Oscar’s tommy gun as he mowed down the stragglers in the back of the group. He heard Nora pull two more shots on their left, her body sweeping behind his and taking down a pair of crawlers he hadn’t even heard move yet.

The trio that had been closest to the car, however, were looking at them now; beady eyes shining and nobody home. Nora flipped back and clipped one in the side before her ammo ran out. She released the cartridge, readying to slam another set of bullets into the pistol and finish the job. The group of ferals snarled at the short pause in gunfire and roared, dashing towards them. 

Time slowed for Nick in that instant, as he realized he wasn’t their primary target. He watched as the first among the ferals took a flying leap at Nora. Watched its contorted jaw opened and its rotting teeth became visible, too close for something that grotesque to be near his wife. Watched as it’s head exploded and it’s body flopped to the side at the trigger end of his own gun. 

Nick hadn’t even noticed that he’d pulled his own pistol, even as smoke rose from the barrel.

A wild growl caught his attention, drawing him out of the shock. He side stepped in front of his wife, gracefully moving to shield her, as if he’d done so a thousand times before. His foot locked his stance in the same instant her ammo clip clicked into place. She’d never need those new bullets, however. 

BAM!

BAM!

In two quick, sure shots, he took down the remaining ferals; a slug for each, right between the eyes.

It was a long moment before he eased his gun back down to his side, willing his finger off the trigger against the rush of adrenalin and the heavy breaths attacking his body now. He startled when he felt her hand gently slide along his lower back and relaxed when she stepped into his view before the fire still burning on the sidewalk in front of him.

His eyes trailed the length of her.

“Y-you alright?” Nick gasped out, confused by the little quirk of a smile gracing her lips.

“I’m good,” she sounded amused.

“Gotta keep your eyes up when you’re reloading, Doll,” he shook his head, trying to clear it. “That one was going for your head.”

“I wasn’t worried,” she shrugged and gave his tie a playful tug. “You had my back.”

She was…

He was…

Oh.

She’d _trusted_ him to take the shot. She’d trusted _him_. 

Nick was sure he looked like hell in that moment, all wide eyed and still running on the terror of the moment, but he suddenly felt like a million caps. She’d trusted him to have her back if something went wrong, and he’d had it. They’d survived it, and they’d keep on surviving it, and someday, he knew he’d look as cool and collected as she did now when it happened again in the future.

“Knew I could count on you,” she winked.

“Damn straight,” he nodded firmly. 

Nora slid her hand back into his, as he placed the pistol back into its spot under his arm and she replaced hers to the holster at her hip. They turned back to the road in unison and Nick held onto her tightly as they continued to walk on.

Something like elation was burbling beneath his rapid heartbeats with each step. She hadn’t left him behind this time and he was determined to keep pace with her for as long as she’d have him.

“Sorry for that,” Oscar called back. “You two alright?”

“We’re good,” Nora responded.

“Doin’ fine,” Nick agreed.

They walked in easy silence for a while after their brush with the night ferals, though Oscar seemed to be a bit more cautious now as he peered under every car they passed, just in case. A little over ten minutes walk from their destination, they hit Arlington and Beacon street, right near the old Boston Public Gardens, and Nick had calmed down enough to remember the reason they were out for this Midnight rendezvous in the first place. 

“Think it might be time for you to fill me in on this shindig we’re headed towards,” he kept his voice low now, hoping Oscar was too far to listen in. “We’re moving too slow to be back up in a gun battle and too fast for this to be a friendly invite to a late night poker game, if you catch what I’m sayin’. What are we doing out here? What’s John need us for this late at night?”

Nora watched the road ahead of them, gnawing at her lip as she considered her words.

“It’s…complicated,” she sighed finally.

“We can work with complicated,” he tightened his hold on her hand in reassurance he’d follow her through hell if need be. “This something I’d be more up on if I still had all my bits and pieces?”

“Yes and no,” she shook her head. “You...you knew some of it. In truth, I think you probably had worked out a lot of it...but not from _us_...not entirely from us. We were...too _proud_ to tell anyone what really happened at the time.”

The way she said “us” hit Nick a bit harder than he was expecting. This “ _us_ ” wasn’t an “us” that included Nick; that much he was sure of. There was a haunted look in her eyes now as they walked along the remains of the public park. A look he’d seen before, on his own face, for months back before the bombs fell, every time he looked in his bathroom mirror. A look he’d worn everyday after that August when Jenny died.

“What happened, Nora?” he asked quietly.

“I know that you and John talked back at HQ,” she started, her eyes refusing to meet his. “I don’t know how much he told you about our time on the road together...his and mine...but I doubt he ever mentioned what happened in the garage.”

“The garage?” Nick swallowed hard, trying not to let his mind run full of horrors and illicit affairs before her words could explain.

“We were helping a settlement,” she shook her head. “They were having some trouble with a group of super mutants out by Milton General Hospital. John and I...we worked well together. Shared a passion for helping out the people who needed it. Maybe we got a little cocky after all the shit we seemed to breeze through, I don’t know.”

She smiled wryly, deep in thought. There was regret there, plain as day now.

“We dealt with the mutants and were headed down the street looking for a place to hole up for the night when we saw it,” she continued, her brows drawn into a deep frown. “It was just a _door_. A door to a parking garage. Someone had painted big arrows pointing towards it.”

“Like the Railroad symbols?” Nick asked.

“We thought it might be something like that at the time. Some kind of joke, maybe, I don’t remember,” she shrugged in defeat. “We didn’t think twice about going inside, though. Figured whatever it was, we could handle it.”

“Knowing the two of you,” he offered her a smile, though she didn’t return it. “I could understand why.”

“We were kind of idiots like that when we were together, all bravado and bullets. Just didn’t know any better at the time,” she shook her head. “John’s part of the reason I turned out like I did after the Vault. Gave me a lot of confidence when I had anything but...reminded me what it meant when you agreed to be a leader. Of the responsibilities and all that.”

“Funny,” Nick nudged her shoulder with his own. “He says the same thing about you.”

That made her smiled for a moment.

“We tempered each other’s faults, I suppose,” she mused. “Sometimes I was too merciful and he was too fast to let the bullets fly. Probably learned a lot from each other in the end.”

Much as he was wary of changing the mood, Nick was still curious about the garage she spoke of. Didn’t take a detective to know something had gone wrong behind that door they’d gone through.

“So you two followed the arrows,” he drove her back to the conversation at hand. She shuddered and Nick immediately regretted not changing the subject in exchange for satisfying his curiosity. He wondered if that haunted look she wore now had kept him from asking her about it when he’d been in the other body. “Not your standard Commonwealth invitation, I take it?” 

“No. The door locked behind us before we’d even realized what happened. The lock and the hinges were on the outside...some sort of custom job. Couldn’t even pick our way out. The only way out was forward after that,” she was lost in the memory now; afraid. “And it was _dark_ in there. _So_ dark.”

“Sounds like one hell of a mousetrap,” he frowned, imagining what that moment of fear must have been like.

“Not quite sure who went to all the trouble to make it, but the whole place was set up as a maze. Like one of those old funhouses we used to go to on the pier,” she shuddered. “Only this one wasn’t quite so _fun_. Three floors of…”

She paused and looked away for a moment. Nick worried he was pushing her too hard right then. He could see how it was affecting her just to think about it. He ought to have just let things go unsaid, until they were somewhere with a lot more light and bourbon at hand. But as he made to say so, she cleared her throat and kept talking, even as her voice hitched on the words.

“It was three floors of a lot of bad things. Traps, feral nests, explosives, turrets...a lot of time and energy went into making that place into one big death maze,” she choked out. “At one point early on, the path split and John...he went left when I went right. Didn’t see each other for again for two whole days and only then through a barred iron door.”

Her hand flexed in his own nervously, but he held fast with his own to ground her. Jesus. He’d never let go of that hand again after this.

“We ran out of stimpaks by the third day. Just...didn’t bring enough with me that trip...it was supposed to be an in and out job, you know?” she sighed raggedly, trying to keep on track. “But we got sidetracked and once we were in, we couldn’t get out again until we found the exit. Until we found each other.”

Nick didn’t need her to voice it to know she was still reliving the horrors of that place. He could see it in her eyes as she spoke to him and he’d have given anything in that moment to be able to free her from those memories if he’d only had the key.

“There was this tripwire at one point...and some kind of damned sword,” she smirked wryly. “Cauterized the wound even as it tore through. I was in so much pain...didn’t think to disable it. Never thought John’s path would cross into mine there.”

Her free hand came up and rubbed absently at the scar over her left shoulder. In long deep strokes, her fingers brushed over the thin cotton of her shirt, following its path as if it still caused her pain. She cringed and shook her head to clear it, forcing that hand into a fist and dragging it away from the scar.

“It took us seven days to climb out of that fucking place,” she said softly; a lament of memory and inability to go back and change things now. “I couldn’t even tell you anymore how many times we almost died in that maze. Wouldn’t have made it another day, though, not in the shape the two of us ended in. Just lucky we got out when we did I guess.”

“Nora,” Nick murmured her name. He pulled her closer, tucking her into his side and wrapping her arm around his waist, before setting his over her shoulders. “I’m sorry you went through it, Doll. I’m sorry.”

She hugged tightly to him now, taking a deep breath to calm the fear still racing in her heart as she went through it all again.

“I wasn’t alone in that nightmare. John...John took a bullet for me in that place. A bullet that would have killed me. A bullet that should have killed him. He begged me to leave him behind, to get out on my own,” she grimaced and her fingers dug into his side. “Just like you did that day in the street when X6 caught us.”

Nick leaned down and kissed the top of her head. He understood now what John had meant when they’d spoken together at HQ. He understood now why John had never worried about her when she was with Nick.

They were so much the same.

“Long story short, we got out. We survived it,” she cleared her throat again, looking hard up at the night sky to keep her tears at bay. “But there’s some stuff we just couldn’t shake, even after we got home. Some stuff we brought back with us without meaning to. I still have nightmares now and then...less so when I’m with you, but John...every once in awhile something just sets him off. Something drags him back into that dark place. And that’s when he needs us to show up and lead him back out again.”

“How often this kind of thing happen?” he asked quietly, wondering at how John managed to maintain such a fearsome countenance after living through that kind of hell. “With John, I mean.”

“A lot at first,” she confessed. “But over the years, less and less. It’s been months since Fahrenheit's had to send someone to our door. He was doing so much better, working through it. We even went to Doctor Amari for a while, got some help, but...something must have happened to set him off.”

Nick thought for a long moment before speaking again. He thought about the life he couldn’t remember and the man he used to be. He thought about what that man had known about all this and what he’d done about it. John Hancock was the first person Nick would have ever really deemed a _friend_ in his lifetime and Nora was his entire world. He couldn’t imagine sitting back and letting them suffer alone.

“You said it’d been a long time since you did this run alone,” he started carefully. “I used to go with you?”

“After a while...after we were married,” she nodded. “I can’t say for sure, Nick. We didn’t really talk much about it, but...I think you understood better than anyone else the kind of trauma we’d lived through. Maybe not in the same way, but you still understood.”

“Leaves a lotta guilt behind,” he murmured. “Lotta doubts and long lasting fears, that’s for sure.”

She frowned at that and opened her mouth to speak, only to shut it again. She clenched her teeth before turning to look at him again. There was worry in those baby blues now. Worry for Nick.

“I don’t know what kind of shape he’ll be in when we get there...it could be pretty bad,” she admitted. “John wouldn’t want you to think less of him for this, and neither would I.”

“Even kings need help on occasion,” he shook his head. “Nothing’s ever gonna change my opinion of either of you, Nora. You know you’ll both always be good in my book.”

She seemed relieved by his words then, but something was still eating at her. She closed her eyes and leaned heavily into his side; exhausted. It’d been a long walk.

“Even so... _whatever_ happens tonight, I just want you to know that my heart’s still _yours_. It’s always been yours and _nothing_ will ever change that,” she told him quietly. “But there’s a piece of me that’s always going to be _John’s_ , too. And nothing will ever change that either.”

Nick swallowed hard. Maybe it was just the way she’d said it, that tinge of sorrow coloring her voice in the admission. Maybe it was just a bit of jealousy lingering amid the things he knew about her without a doubt, versus the things he couldn’t remember.

Or maybe it was the memory of the way Nora’s hand had looked in John’s back when she’d been laid up and sleeping in that infirmary bed. A graceful pairing of perfection to ruination. He could still see those hands together now and there was a question there. A question he’d always wondered about since that moment and had never wanted to ask.

His damn mind wouldn’t let it go though. It was sitting right there, on the tip of his tongue and it refused to go unsaid. After a month, they were nothing if not honest with one another.

“Do you love him?” Nick whispered, bracing his heart for a blow.

“Of course I do, just...not like that. Not like you’re thinking. Not like...not like you,” she placed a shy kiss to his shoulder in reassurance. “It was _never_ that way between me and John. I think he knew how I felt about you even before I did. Didn’t stop some people from talking though. Didn’t stop you from asking the same thing once before.”

“Guess I’ve _always_ been a little on the possessive side with you,” he felt suddenly abashed for thinking the worst of them. 

“Well, it’s reciprocated,” she smiled up at him. “But this is one place you have to be okay with sharing me a little...not in _that_ way, just...where the guy that matters most in the room might be someone else for a little while.”

Nora sighed as if her heart was breaking.

“I don’t want him to suffer through this alone. Not ever. Not when I know he needs my help,” she murmured. “I just want you to understand that, because I know how this affects you, too. Kind of comes with sharing the name on the office.”

Even without his memories, Nick felt like he finally had an extremely clear picture in his head of two of the most important people in his life. The emergency kit of chems that had saved them both. The way John had spent his days living in that room with her while she recovered and his time off seeking out Nick for company. The way he must have realized back in that other body that their “us” might not have included him in the _horrors_ they suffered, but could include him in their _recovery_ after. If what Nora said was true, she’d given him more information on their walk tonight than he’d ever had from either her or John previously. She’d opened the door for him if he wanted to be part of it and he wasn’t about to walk away from either of them now. Not ever.

Not when he thought they could use a little of his help.

“I suppose I could stand sharing a little of you with John,” he mused playfully, trying to lighten her mood. “He was a good friend to me back at HQ. Probably the best I’ve ever had and I know he thinks the world of you. Any man that would take a bullet for you same as me is a good one so far as I’m concerned. I trust him.”

“That means a lot to me,” she hugged him tightly. “You’re a good man, Nick.” 

“Well...I can’t say I might not be a _little_ put out after having you to myself all this time,” he admitted honestly. It was the closest he’d allow himself to tell her of the pang of jealousy he seemed to get anytime her eyes weren’t locked to his. “But, I’ll live. You might have to massage the old ego a bit once we get back home, though.”

“Is that what we’re calling it this week?” she grinned wickedly at him.

“You can call it whatever you want so long as the name isn’t the only thing you wrap your lips around,” he muttered dryly.

Nora’s head swiveled up to look at him, her mouth dropped open in surprise. Nick flushed as realization washed through him. The words had left his sharp and clever tongue before he’d had time to consider what he was saying.

Oh, god.

That was...that wasn’t something he meant to ask her for like _this_.

“ _Deal_ ,” she purred. 

Nick was suddenly glad for the dark. He was certain now his cheeks would be glowing if the heat in them was any indication.

“You..,” he cleared his throat, suddenly feeling less like the confident gunman at her back and more like the inexperienced fool he’d been before the war. “You don’t have to... I mean…aw, hell, Nora, I...”

“All you had to do was ask,” she murmured, the smoke in her voice playful and loving.

“A-ha..,” he choked out. “R-really?”

“Anything _else_ you’d like to try, Mister Valentine?” her voice was all smoke and seduction as she teased him.

“I’ll, ah...I’ll have to think about it,” he coughed.

“Just let me know,” she winked.

Goddamn, the _things_ he’d like to let her know. He could already think of ten and he didn’t doubt she was serious about acting on them. 

She’d never stop surprising him.

The gates of Goodneighbor came into view, saving what little dignity he had left in it’s neon glow. The entrance to John’s town wasn’t as grand nor as big as that of the Great Green Jewel, but there was something oddly inviting about the place, even with the sandbags and barbed wire. Maybe it was because John had once told Nick that he’d always be welcome in the free city. Maybe it was because Nick had a thing for neon lights and the bad part of town.

It was always the most honest part of town in his experience, and if John Hancock was any indication, Goodneighbor was probably the most honest look he’d ever get of the Commonwealth.

Oscar led them through the ramshackle wood and sheet metal gate with the large neon arrow leading their path. The courtyard just beyond was fairly well lit for the size of it, washed in the yellow glow of lamplights and the bright blues and yellows of the blazing shop signs. It had the smell of old Boston in that courtyard; dirt and people and the faint aroma of ammonia from urine that had long since been washed away but that refused to completely leave. John had told him how the whole place used to reek of old garbage and day old piss, but when he’d returned to clean up his town of the more dangerous criminal elements that stalked it, he’d made good on his attempts to turn it into a refuge for the lost. Nothing in the Commonwealth might ever be considered clean ever again, but in Goodneighbor, it looked now as though someone had at least made the effort to tidy up the place a bit. 

There were other scents in the air that Nick thought might be newer to the little town. Scents of bread fresh from the oven, of food cooking in open market stalls, of smoke and cigars and the strong, sweet scent of whiskey. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear a woman crooning. It was muffled as were the trumpets and piano that accompanied her, but it sounded like something he might have heard on the radio all the same.

Much as he wanted to explore John’s town now, he knew Nora had brought him here for other reasons tonight and he wasn’t about to drift on her for curiosity’s sake.

“Fahrenheit’s waiting up there for ya,” Oscar nodded at Nora once they’d crossed into town. 

“We can take it from here,” Nora nodded back. “Thanks again, Oscar.”

“Always a pleasure, Kitten,” he doffed his hat and dusted off in the direction of the music.

“This way,” Nora took her husband’s hand and lead him forward, straight up to the Old State House.

“Fancy digs,” Nick nodded appreciatively, before stopping. “Hey, Doll...Oscar mentioned something about _rules_ back at our place. What’d he mean by that?”

Nora turned back to him just before she’d opened the door.

“All that stuff I told you on the road? The reason that we’re here tonight?” she spoke in hushed tones, as if the walls had ears. “We don’t talk about it to anyone, _ever_. Some of the more... _aggressive_ elements might take it as a weakness...they’d use it to question John’s authority.”

Nick could understand that. From what he’d learned at HQ, John hadn’t become mayor by shaking hands and kissing babies and he hadn’t _remained_ mayor by letting people think he was anything but the long, sharp edges he looked to be. 

“So far as the majority of the town knows,” Nora told him frankly. “You and I come here to spend time getting blotto and reminiscing with John when he’s feeling particularly high.”

“And the minority of the town?” he questioned, not missing the ones she’d left out.

“They think that John likes to _fuck_ me,” she shrugged. “And that you like to _watch_.”

Nick coughed at that. He could see another gun ghoul staring at them from farther on down the street as they hesitated in the doorway.

“Well, now,” he wasn’t quite sure what to say about that one. Thankfully, his silver tongue did. “Might as well give them _something_ to talk about then. Wouldn’t want the cheap seats to get bored.”

He swatted her ass when she turned around to open the door and tipped his hat to the Neighborhood Watchmen before stepping in behind her.

“Nick!” she hissed when they were safely inside. “Don’t _encourage_ them!”

“Why not?” he whispered with a grin.

“I’m thinking of _you_ here,” she murmured, her voice tinged with concern. A slender hand rose to stroke his jaw and he could tell it bothered her. “People will _talk_ …”

“So?” he took her hand and kissed it. “Let them talk. Doesn’t matter what they think. Not when you’re sharing my name. Practically got it painted on your hip.”

He brushed a smart thumb under the waistband of her jeans where he knew the little heart tattoo branded her.

“I know where you keep that heart of yours,” he rumbled low in her ear, stroking his thumb over that little mark on her skin and delighting in the way it made her shiver. “And who it belongs to.”

This was...new. Much as he’d started helping in these situations before, Nora could tell the rumors the dregs of society cooked up still bothered Nick from time to time, back when he’d had yellow eyes and tattered skin. She knew it had made him feel _lesser_ in a way; no matter how much she’d tried to reassure him otherwise. He’d secretly hated the insinuation that Hancock had to step in to provide service where the gossipers assumed Nick was deficient. As if he’d _ever_ been deficient in anything where she was concerned. 

She smiled to herself at how self-assured he seemed now in comparison. He was always so goddamned beautiful, and when he wasn’t doubting himself, she found him _radiant_.

Confidence in Valentines always needed to be rewarded. 

Leaning up she nipped the soft skin of his neck with her sharp little teeth, pulling herself closer by the lapels of his trench coat.

“Then, you’d better prepare yourself for when we get home, Mister Valentine,” she purred in his ear, close enough to send him shivering this time. “You’re not the _only_ one with a _talent_ for using their tongue in the family.” 

Nick shuddered as she pulled away from him coyly. Goodneighbor be damned. He suddenly couldn’t _wait_ to get back to Diamond City.

Business had to come first, though.

Nora led him out of the shadows of the foyer and up the winding wooden staircase. The world as they ascended was cast in the stark light from the moon through the high seated windows. It bathed the color out of them and everything in the vicinity, reminding Nick of the gravity in their current task at hand. 

The Old State House had seen better days, but it looked like John’s people had repurposed most of the rooms into living quarters and offices. Even in the harsh lighting of the late night hour, the place had an oddly inviting feel that Nick didn’t recall noticing when he’d visited it back after he’d first moved to Boston. It felt more like a crash pad than a government building now. Nick thought it was an appropriate sort of castle that matched the flavor of its ruling king. He tried to imagine the stir John’s brand of politics would have caused back in the day. One thing Nick was certain of: It would have been an amazing sight to see.

As they crested the top of the staircase, he froze. A figure moved out of the shadows just ahead of Nora and the hardest looking woman he’d ever laid eyes on stood staring at them, a permanent frown etched on her face. She was planted before a closed set of heavy oak doors, arms crossed and looking like she could kill a man with a thought.

“Fahrenheit,” Nora called out to her, the smoke in her voice smooth and calming and easy on the ears. 

“Thanks for coming,” she nodded, the flip of her orange-red hair on the non-shaved side flowing freely in the movement. 

“What happened?” Nora asked as they came to the taller woman’s side. “He was doing so well…”

“He was,” Fahrenheit shook her head. “Ain’t had trouble like this in so long, thought he might be done with it. It’s been real good lately, you know?”

Her frown deepened to a sneer.

“Then some asshole trader rolls into town,” she spat. “Thought he was real cute. Tried breaking the embargo we had on... _blacklisted_ items. Guess he thought he was hot shit or something. He sent a package up to John’s office. One of the new boys brought it in. Didn’t check it like he shoulda first.”

“What was it?” Nick asked, genuinely concerned now.

“One of those _damn_ cymbal monkeys,” she snarled at the memory of the thing.

“O-oh..,” Nora stuttered out. Her face had gone white as a sheet. “There was a...there was a room…”

Nick wasn’t sure what a cymbal monkey might have been slang for, but by Nora’s reaction, it wasn’t good.

“John didn’t take to it well, I’d imagine,” Nick noted, placing a hand at his wife’s back to steady her.

“Thought he was gonna flip his shit right then and there,” Fahrenheit shook her head. “But he kept it together. I _thought_ so at least. Just shut the box up again and walked off with it.”

“What’d he...what’d he do with it?” Nora asked quietly.

“Shoved it right down that trader’s throat, cymbals and all,” she shrugged. “Not much left to bury once he took the shotgun to ‘em. 

Nick blanched.

“K-kinda let him off light, don’t ya think?” he joked, trying not to be sick at the thought of it all. 

“I can assure you, Goodneighbor takes the trade embargo _seriously_ ,” Fahrenheit was suddenly all business, as if what Nick had just said wasn’t a joke. “Personally, I’d have shoved the damn thing straight up the guy’s ass with a couple of frags, and watched him go to pieces, but what can you do? Hancock’s the mayor and he’s got his own style for things.”

“O-oh...well,” Nick cleared his throat. Commonwealth Justice was still a concept he was adjusting to. “Good on him.”

“Yeah, I thought so, too,” she nodded. “Whole town took it as a chance to let loose, celebrate. Been awhile since we’ve had that kind of a party and Hancock don’t usually show his hand that rough anymore. It was good for the people.”

“But not for John,” Nora finished for her.

“Halfway through the night I noticed he’d wandered off from the herd,” she told them. “You know how he is, life of the party. Thought he might be making the rounds or passed out from the chems...but I found him in his office. He hadn’t even touched the stuff he’d pulled out on the table.”

“How long’s he been in there?” Nora asked, panic clearly growing in her voice.

“Since early last morning,” she sighed. “I couldn’t risk sending for you during the day. It’s safer if you come at night.”

“I could have made some excuse to be here,” Nora lamented, already reaching for the door. “Don’t...don’t leave him like this. I’d rather let the _whole_ town think we’re doing chems and fucking like rabbits than this.”

Fahrenheit grabbed her wrist before she entered. Nick nearly reached for his gun.

“I didn’t want the people thinking he’d gone soft,” she explained. “That he was weak.”

“Then let them think _I_ have,” Nora murmured back. “ _Ruin_ me if you have to, but _save_ him before a reputation next time. John can take whatever shit they want to dish out and whatever he can’t handle the three of us can shoulder for him.”

Fahrenheit looked at Nora a hard moment before nodding and stepping away.

“Nobody’ll be saying shit about either of you,” she smirked. “I’ll slit a new smile in their throats if they even look at you funny. I got the door. You take care of Hancock.”

Nora nodded in return before turning the door handle and quietly moving into the shadows of the inner room beyond it. Nick tipped his hat in Fahrenheit's direction, before following his wife through and closing the door behind himself.

John’s office was silent and _dark_.

The only light in the room; a strong cast of moonlight through the east window that fell across a pair of mismatched couches and a coffee table lined with chems in the middle of the large floor. Though it was hard to see in the shadows, John’s red coat was sitting on a ratty, square footstool near one of the couches. Nora pressed her finger to her lips and Nick nodded. Tentatively, she approached the coat, sliding off her postman’s bag and placing it on top of the material before moving farther in. 

She couldn’t see him anywhere in the shadows. Generally, not a great sign.

“John?” she called out softly. “It’s me.”

Silence.

Nick took a careful step forward.

“Marco?” Nora tried again, using their old call sign and speaking a bit louder this time.

“P-polo..,” came the faintest of replies from somewhere to her right.

Nick could see Nora clearly in the moonlight now. Could see the deep sigh of relief that set her shoulders, before she moved beyond the sitting area towards the shadowy outline of a desk on the far wall. She crouched down long before she got too close.

“Hey,” she said quietly, peering into the darkness. “Found you.”

“N-nora?” John’s rasp shook as he stared back at her with his good eye.

He was difficult to make out in the deep shadows of the office, but as her eyes adjusted to the lack of light, her heart broke for her friend. He was tucked far beneath the safety of the desk, back pressed to the corner and knees pulled tight to his chest. His shotgun was in hand, though the barrel shook nearly as much as he did. His tricorne hat was missing.

“Nick’s with me,” she said lightly, licking her lips to wet them.

“No, no, not tonight. He shouldn’t..,” John shook his head, rubbing a mottled hand over the scars on his forehead. “H-he shouldn’t _be_ here. Not for this.”

“But he came anyway,” she offered, her voice low and soothing. “He _knows_ , John.”

“H-how much?” his voice was so low, it was barely audible.

“More than before,” she confessed quietly. “We both knew we’d tell him someday...seemed like a good time, tonight.”

“Oh..,” John nodded nervously and she could see how bad the tremors had him now. “S’alright, then. We’re good.”

She crawled a bit closer, eyes bright and watching his gun.

“Heard you gave Fahrenheit a bit of a scare when you left the party,” Nora murmured, taking another careful move forward when he didn’t flinch.

“J-just n-needed a breather...too many folks there,” he responded with a hissed sigh. “Got a bit lost when I came in...couldn’t remember how many steps it was to the office...g-got a bit lost, and I…”

He shuddered hard, shaking his head.

“A-and I couldn’t find you,” he sobbed. “I couldn’t find you.”

“Just ended up on the wrong side of the wall,” she whispered. “But I’m here now. Can I join you?”

He looked up sharply and stared at her a hard moment, as if he was suddenly unsure it was Nora in front of him and not just a trick of the maze again. He was _pretty_ sure it was Nora though. He really wanted it to be Nora. Kind of needed her right now.

He sighed raggedly, before his chin jerked in agreement Though she didn’t hesitate, she moved slowly until she was under the desk with him.

“Long time no see,” she whispered. “Saw your trail.”

“Left the coat out there for ya,” he nodded, moving the shotgun away so she could crawl in closer beside him. “J-just in case.”

“I found it,” she settled in next to him, pressing tightly to his side. He hummed roughly in response, his forehead dropping against Nora’s hair. “Thanks for that.”

“You always get so goddamned cold,” he breathed out, rubbing his head back and forth against hers. He prayed hard in that moment that this wasn’t some sort of hallucination brought on by withdrawal. “Didn’t want cha turnin’ blue on me again. You’re always goin’ blue, y’know?”

She’d been so pale and blue on that floor. And shaking. And with that damn gate between them, all he’d been able to do was pass her his coat and hold her hand. It was so goddamned cold that hand. All the blood had gone straight out of her.

John had been painfully _sure_ she was going to die that night, lying there next to him on the other side of those iron bars.

He’d been sure she was going to _die_ ; cold and blue and wearing his red coat.

He took one of her hands in his now and tucked it under his chin to keep it warm.

“I t-told you,” he growled at her. “You need _gloves_.”

“I know,” she brought her free hand up, stroking the scars along his jaw in a gentle caress and letting him keep her other one. “Feeling alright now, though. How’re you doing, John?”

“N-not so good tonight,” he confessed, leaning heavily against her in his exhaustion. Her hands always felt so damned good against his scars. They were hands that got shit done. Hands that had saved him; an angel’s hands. Hands that should never have had to touch a sinner like him. He always felt bad when he borrowed her hands, but right now, he needed them. “D-didn’t mean for them to drag you out here like this again. Sorry, Sunshine.”

“You don’t have to apologize to me, John. You know I’ll always have your back,” she shook her head against his. “...Fahrenheit told me what happened.”

“I-it’s stupid,” he grumbled into her hair. “Just a _goddamned_ toy and I’m shakin’ in my boots.”

She ran her fingers in little circles at his temple, trying to relieve the tension she felt there after a day of clenching his teeth. 

“It’s not stupid,” she said soothingly. “I remember.”

“J-just put that fear in me, y’know? Couldn’t shake it,” he chuckled wryly, gruff and abrasive in it’s sound. “I’m so _tired_ of this shit, Nora. I’m so tired of livin’ in that fuckin’ _maze_.”

“But we’re _not_ anymore, you know?” she murmured, her hand slipping down to where his chest lay exposed beneath the frills of his shirt. His heart was going a mile a minute, despite the calm of his breaths. She cringed when she thought about how many hours he’d probably been sitting under the desk and waiting for her like that. “You and me, we survived it, John. We got out, together.”

“I _know_ ,” he rasped painfully, his hand coming over her at his chest. “I know that in my head, I just can’t...sometimes I can’t get _out_. Sometimes...I think _you_ didn’t get out.”

“But we _did_ get out,” she leaned up and kissed his cheek. It was damp and left a salty tang on her lips when she pulled away. John shuddered at the small touch and sagged against her. She didn’t doubt how exhausted he must be under the fear. “We’ll get through it again tonight, just like we always do.”

“Y-yeah, sure,” he agreed, swallowing hard. “C-couple a badass survivors, we are.”

“That’s right,” she smiled, approaching her next subject carefully. “Can I borrow your gun for a moment?”

He tensed back up immediately at her request, though he didn’t pull away. Nora slowly ran her hand back up to his temple and down the length of his neck again, trying to calm the reason back into him again.

“Why?” he finally responded, his voice a dull croak.

“Because we both know you don’t really need it right now,” she kissed his cheek again and held him tight. “And because you’ll be more upset if it goes off when you don’t mean for it to. You feel me?”

He hesitated only a moment before handing her the shotgun.

“I...I feel ya,” he nodded.

“I’m going to have Nick put it out of the way,” she explained gently. “That alright with you?” 

“S-sure,” he held tightly to her in place of the shotgun, breaths deep and ragged. He felt naked without the gun. Exposed. But she wasn’t wrong.. He knew she wasn’t wrong. “D-don’t need it right now. Let him have it.”

“Nick?”

The third in their little party had been still standing a cautious distance away for some time now, just listening, but he crossed the room in four easy steps when she called for him. Though Nick could barely see John under the edge of the desk, Nora’s legs were visible as was the barrel of the shotgun she held out to him.

“Heya, John,” he called softly, sliding the gun out from Nora’s grasp and lifting it out of reach from the desk. 

“E-evenin’, Nick,” Hancock’s frayed voice played at gentility. “H-how you likin’ Goodneighbor?”

“Haven’t seen much of it yet,” he said easily. “Been awhile since HQ though. Thought I might stop in and take you up on that drink though while I was in town.”

“B-bit tired tonight,” the ghoul confessed.

“No rush,” Nick assured him. “Better weather tomorrow anyhow, I’d bet.”

“R-right,” Hancock’s rasping chuckle whispered from beneath the desk.

“You’ll feel better after you sleep, John,” Nora reminded him, rubbing her fingers into the base of his neck and the knot of muscle still shaking there. “Think we might try lying down for a bit?”

“Could use some Jet first,” he murmured.

“Might be able to find some stashed on the table,” Nick mused. “Looks like you’ve got a hell of a supply hanging out over there.”

“N-not from there,” John suddenly shook harder against Nora, catching her up into his chest. “C-can’t remember which ones I made over there...which ones are safe.”

“Lucky for you then,” Nora smiled into his neck. “I brought my stash. The ones you gave me after the C.I.T shit.”

“G-gonna have ol’ Nick thinkin’ I’ve got you slingin’ up again,” Hancock laughed harshly. 

“Hasn’t thrown me outta bed for eating crackers yet,” she grinned.

“S-shouldn’t be throwin’ you outta bed at all,” Hancock frowned. He didn’t like that idea. Nick and Nora needed to be together. They were one of the few absolutes in the world and he liked that kind of thing. “You guys good?”

“We’re good,” Nick answered for them.

“Told ya,” John nodded, relaxing a little more against Nora’s hair once his world reset to normal. “Just time and details.”

“Shall we try leaving the desk?” Nora asked him gently. “I can help you out.”

“Wouldn’t say no to that right now,” he shrugged weakly. “Think I’ve been sittin’ on my ass under here all day. Everythin’s asleep.”

“I’ll go first then,” she kissed his forehead one last time for good measure, earning a shy smile for the effort. 

“D-don’t,” he whispered, gripping her hand in his. “ Don’t leave me behind, Sunshine.”

Nora stopped to look at him. He’d never asked that of her before. There was always the fear she’d leave him, the fear he’d lose her when he wasn’t looking, but never a request for himself, not like this. Something _had_ changed that day they fought Ayo and for once, Nora was glad that shithead from the Institute had existed at all.

“Never,” she smiled brightly at him. “We go together, alright?”

It took a bit more coaxing after that and some help from Nick to untangle the ghoul’s legs from where they’d locked at the knees in his day long isolation, but in a short while, they had him standing on his own two feet again, albeit not as stable as either Nick or Nora would have prefered. 

Despite being the tallest out of the three of them, John’s shoulders were rounded forward and he seemed smaller than Nick remembered him, mostly on account of the way he was curling into himself, even standing. The shaking wasn’t helping matters either. Nick wondered how much of it was the fear and how much of it was the chem withdrawal. Probably a bad combination of both.

It was difficult, seeing Hancock like that. Nick missed the man who looked like he owned the world. It reminded him too much of Nora, when she was laid up in HQ. When she’d looked fragile and broken and like she might never wake again.

It looked wrong.

“M-maybe standin’ ain’t such a good idea,” John shivered now, looking back longingly at the desk. 

“You’re just tired, John. Come on,” Nora tried to persuade him. “Let’s get you to the couch and lay down.”

“A-ain’t enough room on the couch for three like that,” John shook his head despondently. “Where’s Nick gonna sleep?”

In that moment, with that question, Nick suddenly understood a lot of things.

He knew from all the stories he’d heard back at HQ that the Commonwealth often made strange bedfellows between friends. He’d tried long and hard not to imagine how many people in HQ had known the pleasure of lying down beside Nora, as if the act of sleeping was somehow scandalous. Moreso now that he’d done it himself; sleep was one of the greatest acts of intimacy Nick shared with her. It was a small intimacy in the scheme of things, but one he kept closely guarded. It was just one of those things he couldn’t help but consider _his_ , as far as experiences went, and like a jealous kid, he balked at the idea of sharing that.

Nick had known in his head that sharing bedrolls in the Commonwealth wasn’t considered improper in the same way it had been before the bombs. It was done for warmth as much as it was done for safety, but he could also understand now it wasn’t just about that. He could understand how Nora had survived so many nights out in this new world without him now. How so _many_ people could survive the night out there now, so long as they were _together_.

It was a comfort. 

Maybe the only comfort some people were ever granted in the ruins of the once great city.

Nick imagined even sleeping with a stranger beside you could bring some relief in that seemingly endless night. He knew from experience how sleeping beside someone you trusted could keep any nightmare at bay.

A month ago...hell, an hour ago, the thought of her lying with another man in her arms would have burned him. In some ways, with some people, he knew it might burn him still. But faced with the idea that man might be John?

There was a different feeling there.

It felt strangely like trust.

There was nothing illicit or worrying about John with Nora. Quite the opposite. They were friends in a way Nick had never known friendship and while they were close, neither one had forgotten about Nick. They _worried_ about Nick and his feelings, even when he should be the one worried about the injured state of theirs. 

He had no doubt left in his heart that Nora loved him and Nick was a big enough man to share her when she was needed most, especially right now and with John. He decided he could give up holding her for one night. He could share the comfort the simple intimacy of lying beside her might bring if that’s what Hancock needed right now.

Nick was a possessive man when it came to Nora, but he was a good man, too.

Besides, any sting of jealousy he might feel he knew she’d assuage for him later.

“I can take the other couch,” Nick offered. “Be just like when we were back at HQ.”

“N-no! No,” John shook his head, followed by his own body. “That’s...that’s too far. We gotta stick together. Gotta make sure we’re _all_ safe.”

“Do you mind?” Nora turned her eyes to Nick.

Well. That was certainly...not at all what he was expecting. Nick suddenly felt more included in their “us” than he had been prepared for.

“S-sure,” he swallowed hard, feeling vastly out of his realm of knowledge again.

“It’s like camping,” she winked at him. “Just real close.”

“W-what’s wrong?” John’s head twitched toward Nick. 

“Not a thing,” Nick assured him easily. “Just haven’t...gone _camping_ before.”

“S-scared I’ll jump ya?” John’s mouth twitched into a grin.

“Didn’t know it was that sort of party,” Nick coughed and stared hard at the floor. He was used to playing this sort of innuendo with Nora. He felt a bit awkward now that John had joined in.

“H-heh. Me neither, but I’m flexible,” Hancock snorted.

“He’s just giving you shit, Nick,” Nora swatted John’s arm playfully. “You’ll be on your best behavior, won’t you Mister Mayor?”

“C-comon’, Sunshine,” he shrugged. “Y-you know I don’t make promises I won’t keep.”

“The sign of a true player,” she rubbed his back affectionately, before turning to Nick. “Switch places with me here for a minute?” 

“W-where you goin’?” John was suddenly sounding more panicked again as she left his side, even as Nick joined him.

“Nowhere far,” she promised. “Just need to move some furniture.”

“Y-yeah, well, stay where I can see you, y-you feel me?” he relaxed against Nick ever so slightly, though his dark eye watched her every move.

“That new eye-patch for real or you just workin’ a new angle with the night crowds?” Nick asked breezily, trying to distract Hancock while Nora pulled the tables out of the way and started arranging the couch cushions near one of the frames.

“I-tt’s as real as they come, brother,” Hancock rewarded him with a cheeky grin. “K-kind of a bitch to get used to, but I think it suits me alright. Definitely a big hit with the ladies.”

“Suits you just fine, John,” Nick agreed. “Probably doesn’t hurt the reputation either. You looked like one helluva tough sonofabitch before, but now? Could probably scare of one of those super mutants just by starin’ at him.”

“W-what can I say?” he shrugged playfully. “I just got that look about m-me.”

“There, room for three,” Nora interrupted, gesturing to the neat pile of cushions on the floor.

She’d made a mattress out of every furniture cushion in the room, the grey blanket she’d brought spread neatly over them. It’d still be a tight fit, but so long as they weren’t afraid to sleep close, they’d have room to spare.

Nick threw an arm around John before the shakes were on him fully again, leading him carefully around the couch. He could hear the soft numbers falling from Hancock’s ruined lips as he counted the steps it took for them to reach it. Once more, Nick felt the sharp tug in his chest as he wondered how they’d ever survived the hell they’d stumbled into for a man as proud and strong as John Hancock to be reduced to a quaking frame of skin and bones. Nick knew first hand the kind of damage severe trauma could cause a person, though, no matter how goddamned tough they were to start with. The fact that John was still standing was proof enough of his strength for Nick and between him and Nora, they’d make sure John could keep standing long after they’d left his side again.

Nora watched the tremors in John’s hands as they got him situated on the cushions with his back pressed firmly to the couch. Nick already helping him out of his boots. 

“How long’s it been since your last chem break?” she asked casually.

“T-too long,” he sighed, then chuckled. “Why? You pushin’ shit on me now?”

“Gotta make my caps some way,” she grinned, pulling the inhaler of Jet from her bag. “No doubt you’ll be my best customer.”

“Smart-ass,” he snorted. “Y-you two comin’? Startin’ to feel a bit exposed here again. Desk’s lookin’ better by the minute.”

“You just lay there and we’ll join you,” Nora laughed, toeing off her shoes and dropping her leather coat on the remains of one couch.

“You’re gonna turn blue again,” John frowned at her. “Nick, t-tell her she’s gonna turn blue again.”

Nick looked at her, trying not to laugh. He was doing a poor job of keeping the smile off his face though as the corners of his lips began to twitch. Hancock wasn’t wrong about Nora. The woman seemed perpetually on the cool side of a snowdrift.

“Don’t you start, too,” she rolled her eyes, picking up Hancock’s red coat and sliding her arms through it. It was ridiculously big on her small frame. Nearly large enough to be a bathrobe. Nick choked down his laughter, but Hancock didn’t manage the same; a quick, short bark of a chuckle echoing through the dark. “Go ahead and laugh it up. I happen to know you’re both excellent space heaters. You’ll be lucky if you don’t wake up with my cold toes all over your ass.”

“H-hell of a pick up line,” John snorted.

“They can’t all be winners, now scoot up and let me in,” she shooed him back a bit as she took position to the front of John on the floor. “And leave room for Nick you big cushion hog.”

“Y-you’re bossy for such a little thing,” Hancock grumbled and pulled her into his chest. Though his tone was teasing, from his place above them, Nick could see the way John’s hands shook and the sigh of relief that stilled them the moment she was tucked under his chin. “Thought you were s-supposed to be nice to me. A-and get your ass down here, Nick. M-makin’ me nervous just lookin’ at ya.”

“Sorry for that,” Nick chuckled nervously and slipped out of his shoes before easing down behind Nora.

He settled stiffly on the cushions, even as John threw the rest of the blanket over him. It wasn’t the same as sleeping with her on his own, and suddenly, Nick had no idea where to place his limbs.

“You alright?” Nora asked, one of her hands reaching back and catching his hip to pull him closer.

“Sure, sure,” Nick wet his lips. “Just getting situated, Doll. Kinda new to all this...camping.”

He heard John snort into Nora’s hair.

“Hey, best behavior, remember?” she flicked John in the chest, before turning back to Nick. “Slide a little lower.”

Doing as she directed, Nick pushed himself down the makeshift mattress a bit more and found an easy position to lock in behind her back with his head resting just behind her neck. It was surprisingly comfortable and without thinking, he slid his arm under hers, startling as the back of his hand brushed the scars of John’s chest.

“W-well look who’s gettin’ handsy, now,” Hancock said in a playful rasp.

“Sorry,” Nick murmured into the back of Nora’s neck, abashed.

“H-holy shit, are you blushin’?” Hancock pushed himself up on one arm to get a better look at Nick. After a moment of scrutiny with his good eye, he laughed. “W-well ain’t that fuckin’ adorable.”

“John,” Nora warned.

“Haha, I-I’m just sayin’, who _knew_ , right?” he settled back down next to her and threw a long arm over Nora, letting his hand rest on Nick’s waist. “Y-you two are too goddamned precious. Cracks me up.”

Nick felt Nora’s hand against his own then, reassuring him with a gentle squeeze. It was... _different_...to say the least, but even with John’s heavy hand resting at his hip, Nick was starting to relax.

“Take your Jet and go to sleep,” Nora fished out the inhaler from between their bodies and held it up for him.

John stopped laughing.

“Something wrong?” Nick inquired, his previous embarrassment gone as Hancock’s mood shifted straight back into fear.

“I..,” he said quietly. “M-maybe I’ll do without.”

“You quittin’?” Nick asked.

“N-nah, hell no,” he shook his head. “J-just...don’t want it.”

“When have _you_ ever turned down Jet?” Nora tilted her head up. “You gave this one to me the last time we saw each other, remember?”

John looked warily at the inhaler.

“Y-you sure that’s the one?” his rasping tone sounded doubtful.

“I only keep the chems you give me, John,” she said gently. “And you only give me chems that you’ve made yourself. It’s a safe one.”

Hancock looked at the inhaler longingly. The withdrawal was hitting him hard and Nora could see he was trying to follow her line of reasoning. She also knew why he was so afraid to take it. Why he was so afraid it might be another hit of that shit he’d picked up in the garage before they’d learned not to take anything from that maze. John had learned that lesson in a particularly hard way. 

It was a wonder he still took mentats at all, afterwards.

“Much as I’d love you to quit, we both know now’s not the time, and you won’t sleep until you’ve taken the edge off,” she murmured. “Want me to take it first?”

The ruined skin where Hancock’s eyebrows used to sit furrowed.

“N-no. No more chems for you,” he shook his head, sadly. “D-deacon’ll kill me.”

“He’s not the only one,” Nick mumbled from behind her.

“Not helping,” she hissed back at him.

“F-forget it,” John shuddered. “I’m good, S-sunshine.”

Nora reached up and stroked his jaw as the shivers of fear and withdrawal shook right down his spine. They’d never pulled a night like this with John so clean before. He usually took too _much_ before an episode; never too little. She suddenly wasn’t sure how he’d be in the morning. If he’d sleep at all.

Over the cover of her shoulder, Nick watched John. Watched as Nora tried to stroke the tension out of his jaw. Watched as John gritted his teeth and pulled her closer, fighting to ignore the tremors wracking his frame. Watched as the frill of his shirt fell open when Nora moved her hand back and his left shoulder peeked out.

He had a deep and ragged scar there, cutting through his multitude of others.

It was a scar that looked just like Nora’s.

Nick thought back to what she’d told him on the road about the sword that had cut and cauterized in the same moment. About how she’d forgotten to disarm the tripwire that activated it. About how John had stumbled into her path.

Nick realized then he wasn’t the only one that shared marks with Nora. John was right. He wasn’t the only man who’d take the bullet for her.

Reaching between them, he sought out her hand and pulled the inhaler from it.

“John,” Nick pushed himself up on the arm still beneath him. “Look at me for a minute, pal.”

Hancock blinked, trying to clear his mind through the shakes and his good eye settled on Nick.

“You owe me one,” Nick said wryly.

“W-why’s that?” John rasped.

He raised the inhaler to his lips, watching Hancock’s good eye growing wider by the moment.There was something like admiration in that black gaze of his. 

Admiration and _respect_.

Before he could reconsider his actions, Nick closed his eyes and let the air flow out of his lungs.

He took the bullet this time; in one deep breath.


	30. Another Man's Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took an extra day...it's hard to write and edit a chapter per day during the week. I'm better for it on the weekends.
> 
> Some things real quick! amz posted this amazing soundtrack in the comments of the last chapter! I've been listening to it all day: https://8tracks.com/rosewaterhag/the-detective
> 
> Also, I was going to load up FO4 and take a screenshot of my Nora, only to remember I'd uninstalled it to not be tempted during my crunch work. Oops. I designed her off this pic of Effy Stonem though, so, this is more or less her if you're interested (please feel free to disregard in favor of your own Noras though <3): http://41.media.tumblr.com/03e822b96b064a9788c4c0a1c3829350/tumblr_niwxlt2Zk21sch18no1_500.jpg
> 
> Also, I can't thank you guys enough for the comments on the last chapter. They were awesome and inspiring and kept me writing through a tiring week. CHEERS FOR CHAPTER 30! Hope you enjoy! <3

Nick woke up on the floor of his office in Diamond City.

He cringed. Even the soft light of his green glass desk lamp stung his eyes after being shut for so long. Groaning at the dull pain in his back from sleeping on the hardwood floor, he struggled to sit up, squinting until his eyes no longer hated him for needing to see. 

The first thing that struck him was the sound of the radio. Jackie Wilson’s To Be Loved was playing softly over the airwaves. 

Strange.

He couldn’t remember Diamond City Radio ever playing that number before. He wondered if Nora had made a copy for Travis before they’d left for Goodneighbor. They had talked about sharing some of their collection, if only to broaden the music being played on the station.

As Nick got to his feet, the second thing that struck him was the sweet scent of Nora’s soap, mixing with the heady smell of tobacco smoke still drifting lazily about the room. Her blue carnival glass ashtray sat on his desk, filled to the brim with spent cigarette butts. One of them was still trailing thin tails of smoke where it’s owner had forgotten to stub it out.

The third thing that struck him was that the ashtray wasn’t alone. Nora’s cream-colored dress with the faint flower print was strewn inside out and over the desk and one of his button downs lay crumpled beneath it on the floor.

This was especially odd as Nick had never actually seen Nora’s cream-colored dress in person before and because he was still dressed; shirt buttoned with the sleeves rolled halfway up and tie lazily knotted below his collarbone. 

“Nora?” he called out, fingering the soft material of her discarded clothing. His throat felt dry and scratchy and he wondered how long he’d been out. He wondered how he’d ended up on the office floor. “Doll...you there?”

The radio was the only sound that answered him.

_“~Someone to kiss, Someone to miss,” it sang. “When you're away,To hear from each day…~”_

Wherever she was, he doubted Nora would have gone far without her clothing. Nick turned to head down the little hallway leading to the bedroom, thinking she might be there, when he stopped.

There was no little hallway. In its place; a wall.

_“~To be loved, to be loved, Ohhh what a feeling. To be loooved~.”_

Turning back, Nick glanced over the office. He was losing it. He was sure he was losing it now.

The office was... _different_.

Nora’s desk was still there, but the photograph that always sat above it was gone, as were some of her plants. Her chair was turned out; a bouquet of hubflowers and wildgrowths sitting abandoned upon it. On the floor beneath, sat a wine bottle; opened and with two glasses standing guard beside it. Both were stained a burgundy red at the bottom.

Ellie’s desk was gone, however, as was the old stand-up cigarette machine. In the place where they should have been, Nick’s old bed with the brown comforter now sat. The sheets looked freshly washed and it was sharply made. It didn’t look slept in.

“Well, Alice,” he muttered to himself. “Looks like we fell right into Wonderland.”

For a moment, Nick just stood there, taking in the room. For a moment, he thought he must be dreaming...but he’d never dreamt of the office before. Not that he could remember, anyway.

His heart skipped a beat.

Maybe it was a _memory_. It’d been so _long_ since he’d had one and this...this could finally be what he’d been waiting all this time for. A memory of Nora. A memory of Nora and himself.

More excited now than he’d been a minute previous, Nick turned to head out, thinking he might find something more if he went to Home Plate, when he stopped again. 

The office door was in the wrong place.

And it wasn’t the office door. 

It was the door to his bedroom. The one from his little apartment with the bay window off Monroe and Third street...but there was a drawing on the door. A drawing in white chalk, clear as day.

A drawing of white wings.

Nick smiled to himself. Wherever this dream or memory was going, he was anxious to get to it. He strode slowly to the door and placed his ear against the wood, but he couldn’t hear anything except for that Jackie Wilson number playing on the radio from the office.

“In for a cap,” he shrugged.

His hand reached for the doorknob, noting it was silver and not the brass his apartment had been filled with back before the bombs. He turned it carefully and opened the door.

The radio shut off behind him. The light in the office went out.

There was nothing behind him now and only silence to his front. It left him with an odd sort of feeling; not fear, but wariness, perhaps.

“Just a dream,” he reminded himself. “Just your brain trying to sort things out.”

Bolstered by that thought, Nick stepped through the door and into the apartment living room.

His breath caught even before the door behind him swung quietly shut and locked with a definitive click.

It looked like a bomb had gone off in the room.

Dust was _everywhere_ ; floating through the air, collecting on the beat up leather couch, coating the coffee table and the bookshelves. Bits of paper and debris lay on the wood floors; pages upon pages of his books that had been caught up in the blast and were no longer readable. The record player and radio he’d had were both broken and his fern in the corner had long since gone to that great big garden center in the sky.

He wasn’t sure what time of day it was, despite the hundreds of broken clocks that lined the walls and sat rusting on the bookshelves. They’d all stopped at the same time though.

They’d all stopped at seven.

The light in the room was bright and stark, and yet, still gloomy. The kind of gloomy light Nick used to despise in the afternoons when the clouds refused to rain, but that still ate up the blue sky with their presence. The kind of light that washed a little of the color out of everything until they all ran together in faded tones of not quite grey.

There was no aroma of coffee brewing this time; the pot broken on the counter and the ceramic mug with the Boston Police Department logo on it smashed. There was no scent of Nora’s roses; her little garden boxes and jars now empty, save for the dirt. The clutter and color that had filled the room the last time he’d woken here was gone now, and even the cards spread out on the coffee table seemed like they hadn’t been used in a while. It looked like someone had started a game of solitaire, except that all the card backs were facing up, save for two.

The King and Queen of Hearts lay off to the side. Even from here, Nick could see Nora’s portrait painted twice on the Queen. She wore that little cream-colored dress in both versions, but in the top half of the card she wore a crown of hubflowers and in the bottom half of the card, she wore a crown of roses. Her eyes were closed under the hubflowers and it looked like she’d been crying, but they were open and blue as blue could be in the bottom portrait. In that one, she was smiling.

The King of Hearts wasn’t in as good of shape as his matching Queen. On the bottom half of the card, Nick recognized himself; coat sharp and hat black. His skin was sun-kissed and his eyes grey and he shared the same sort of happy smile that Nora’s rose-crowned portrait did. In his hand, he held a silver key, the one he recognized now from his last dream. The one that Nora had been wearing around her neck with the heart-shaped bow.

On the top half, however, the face of the king had been scratched out until the back of the card had been split through. They were frenzied, angry scratches; haphazard in their design to erase the portrait that once had been painted there. Not all of the second king had been destroyed though. The top of his faded fedora still sat above the missing face and the tattered edges of his trench coat were visible near the one metal hand poised just above the portrait split. This hand held a little piece of wire, coiled into the shape of a heart, around a tiny black memory chip.

He took a step back from the cards when the light from the bay window changed with the clouds. The soft haze of struggling sunlight through the glass caught his eye and he looked up. 

Nick hadn’t even noticed; he wasn’t alone in the room.

Nora lay on her back upon the window seat, looking far worse than he’d ever remembered seeing her at HQ. The thin white t-shirt she wore was stained in a myriad of ink blacks and bright blood reds and her freckled skin was pale and bruised and bleeding from too many cuts and scrapes to count. A gash near her hairline left a red river down one temple where it ran into the hidden depths of her dark hair. Her left arm was ruined where the asphalt had scraped her skin away, gravel and dirt clinging deep into the wounds embedded there. The rife wound just above her left hip was still bleeding and with every breath, just a little more blood pooled under the soaked cotton of her shirt. Her blue eyes were closed and sleeping and though she was a mess, she looked impossibly beautiful as she lie there. Thick red roses littered the cushions around her, their petals catching in her hair and dripping to the floor and taking in the soft beams of sunlight as they washed her in cool golden light. 

She was pretty, in that way you imagine fairy tale heroines to be. A real Snow White laid out in her glass bed and waiting for her prince to come.

By the looks of it, though, she wouldn’t have to wait long.

 _He_ sat in one of the old kitchen chairs, pulled as close to the bench she lay upon as it would go. He held one of her slender hands in both of his; one a ghostly shade of dirty white, and the other, a skeleton’s claw made of steel. His head was bowed and pressed to her knuckles, so much so that it tilted back the brim of his faded fedora. The arms of his tattered trench coat sagged with his shoulders and for all the world, he looked like a man who’d lost everything.

The old apartment room with the bay window off Monroe and Third lay empty and in shambles; save for the sunlight streaming in through the cracked glass of the window over a sleeping angel and the Great Synth Detective that watched over her.

“You shouldn’t be here,” the man in the window suddenly spoke. His voice was Nick’s voice, but the quiet sorrow therein was his own. “This isn’t a place for you.” 

Nick looked around, unsure of what his doppelganger meant by that. He was surprised to see his other self in the old apartment. So far as he knew, the Great Synth Detective had never lived there, nor bothered with the place.

“Why?” he asked finally.

“Because it’s _mine_ ,” the other Nick bit back, voice so low and full up with pain it was practically a growl. “Maybe the only place I’ve got _left._ ”

The synthetic man cringed mournfully against his Nora’s fingers, pressing them reverently to his lips for one long moment before gently setting her hand back to the cushions. The sunlight caught and flashed on the silver of her ring, still present and circled around her third finger.

Nora’s breathing grew impossibly shallow as he released her wrist and the sunlight faded back behind a cloud, bathing the room once again in that dreary bright, grey light.

“Dunno why you’d bother with me now, but I suppose you’re here for this too,” the synthetic Nick said. He swallowed hard and all the wires in his neck took up the motion through the tattered ruins of his throat. “And why not, I guess. You’ve taken everything else from me.”

Nick was shaking his head slowly, trying to understand the reality of the man seated before him. It was one thing to see him in pictures, or as an empty shell on the table in P.A.M’s room back at the Railroad HQ. It was entirely something else to have him there now; moving and speaking and being far too painfully alive and familiar as those yellow eyes glared at him with unspoken accusations and torment.

“I...don’t know what you mean by that..,” Nick murmured, still in awe of his adversary.

The Great Synth Detective didn’t like that response. He swiveled around in his chair and was on his feet in one smooth and graceful motion that was anything but mechanical; it was dangerous.

“Oh don’t try to feed me that kinda garbage!” he snarled at Nick, voice raising and tone angered. He gestured sharply, the agitation of so many days spent in isolation only to be faced with the one man he never wanted to meet becoming too much for him. “You’ve already taken my _life_ , my _job_ , my...my _girl_! What more could you _possibly_ want from me?”

Even as the other man stood ranting at Nick, he felt his heart breaking for him. He could hear the faint sound of coolant pumping quickly through his tubing and the zipping whirl of his fans as they tried to keep up with his temper. 

“I don’t..,” Nick shook his head, still shaken by the implications as his mind was already putting together a scenario. He wasn’t just lacking his other memories from the synthetic shell. Those memories, that man...he was still living somewhere in Nick’s head. “I don’t want…”

“Then why are you _here_?!” the other man barked out sharply. “To check in on your prisoner? To _gloat_?” 

“My prisoner? That’s not...you..,” Nick breathed, wide eyed. “You really don’t _know_ , do you?”

“Know what?!” he roared, fists bunched at his sides in anger. “That you’re out there living _my_ life while I’m trapped in here, a mere shadow of yours!”

“You’re not..,” the man of flesh and bone was pushing past his initial shock now. “You’re not my shadow, Nick.” 

“You’re damn right I’m not!” the man of gears and steel yelled back. He was pacing now. Pacing like an animal who had been caged too long; alone. He rounded back on Nick, the desperation rising again in his voice. “And maybe...maybe I _was_ at one time, but things _changed_ for me, _I_ changed! I had a _life_ , my _own_ life, with the office and with Ellie and with Nora. I might’ve started out as a bad copy of you, but I made something of myself out there, something _different_ and I had…I had...”

He cringed, turning away from Nick as the fight ran out of him.

“You had, Nora,” Nick finished for him.

“I _loved_ her,” the Great Synth Detective lamented. Sorrow and desperation dripped from his words and were knives in Nick’s chest, even as they bled upon the broken floor. “ _Me_ , on my own. I loved _her_. And she wasn’t just some flash of _memory_ I got from you, she wasn’t _Jenny_. She was _mine_ , _my_ partner. My _girl_...my...my goddamned _wife_...and you just…”

He gestured weakly; hands flexing and empty. 

“You just _took_ her from me. The _one_ thing in this crummy goddamned world that was _mine_ and that had nothing to do with you,” his voice hitched as he spoke now, thick with the mechanical memory of tears. “I lived my _whole_ damned life knowing _everything_ I had, everything I _was_...it was all really _yours_. It was just something I’d _borrowed_. And here, when I finally got past that, when I finally found something that could be _mine_ and mine _alone_ , you had to go and take that from me, too.”

“Hey, now...I didn’t _take_ her from you, Nick,” the man with both hands and a heart said, taken aback. He needed to make this version of himself understand and fast. He couldn’t imagine the pain he must be going through...the pain he’d be going through if it were him. “She’s not…”

“Don’t _lie_ to me!” the synthetic Nick choked on the words as if it were anathema to speak them aloud. “You think just because I’m stuck in here that I don’t _know_? That I can’t _feel_ it every time that you...every time she...with...with _you_!”

The miserable expression the Great Synth Detective wore in that moment was heartbreaking. It was full of love and of betrayal and of loss. It was agony incarnate; a grief so palpable and heavy it made the whole world run grey in mourning.

His shoulders fell in defeat as he stood there; tattered and broken in the presence of his perfect reflection.

“She was the only thing I ever really wanted for myself,” he sobbed. “The only thing worth having...the only thing that made my life make any _sense_ and...and…”

“And she made me so goddamned _happy_ I would’ve cried if I could. God I _loved_ her. I _always_ loved her and now I can’t even think of her as _mine_ anymore because she’s with you!” he cried out in anguish. “All I’ve got left are the goddamned _memories_ and this fucking ache in my chest I just can’t shake anymore.”

He slipped back into the chair by the window box. It was an ungraceful motion; a tired one that started at his knees and took his whole body down to rest against the old wood in awkward pieces. He sat there for a moment, the glow of his yellow eyes flickering as he stared at the corner of the coffee table.

“My whole life, all I wanted was to be you. To _really_ be you,” he said quietly. “And the joke is that after all the ...the _garbage_ that I lived through, now _you_ get to be _me_.”

He swallowed hard, shaking his head. His tongue darted out to wet his lips, but it was just a nervous habit as there was no more moisture there than there had been a moment ago.

“I didn’t expect her to mourn me forever. I always knew I’d lose her to someone else, eventually, once I was gone. But knowing _you’re_ the one standing there beside her in _my_ shoes...that you’re the one lying next to her in _our_ bed?” he chuckled without any real mirth behind it. “It’s _killing_ me. Every time she _touches_ you, I can _feel_ it...and it’s killing me. Her hands keep running over my skin and I...I can’t even _hold_ her back anymore. She’s just a ghost haunting the room...reminding me of everything you’ve taken that was _mine_. God, all that time I spent wanting to live another man’s life and now I’d do anything to go back to my _own_.”

He sighed raggedly and rubbed at his face with the steel hand. He looked tired. Tired of everything.

“It’s funny isn’t it? I spent years borrowing your life and now you’re borrowing mine. It’s so...so goddamned funny. So, laugh it up if you want to, pal,” he murmured; head bowed and voice heartsick. “And then, just go...just go and leave me alone.”

Nick stood there in the silence that fell after, watching the Great Synth Detective. It reminded him of seeing Hancock earlier, overcome with fear and chem withdrawal. It reminded him of seeing Nora two months back, when she was pale as the bedsheets she lay upon and fragile from her wounds. 

It looked wrong.

This was the man he’d been _terrified_ of since waking. The man who would always be the better between the two of them. The man who’d been smiling in the photo above Nora’s desk like nothing terrible that could ever happen in his world.

This was the man Nick used to be and had dreamed of becoming again.

This man sat before him now; vanquished. Dejected. 

Alone.

Nick didn’t like that. Not one bit.

“For a guy who claims to be a copy of me, you should know better than anyone I’m not the kinda guy to kick a fella when he’s down,“ Nick said, offering a depreciated twitch of his lips that was almost a smile. He slid his hands into his pockets, staring down at the man before him. Staring at his faded fedora. Staring at the tear in his cheek that left the dark metal of his jaw exposed. Staring at the ghostly white skin of his good hand. 

Staring at what was _missing_ from it. 

“What happened to your ring?” he asked softly.

The Great Synth Detective’s shoulders shook and for a moment, Nick wondered if he he'd be crying, if he could. He wondered why, out of all the things Doctor Birk had given him, he'd failed to include tears. He knew in that moment, if it’d been him; it’s all he’d do.

“I dunno,” the other man said finally, the distress in his voice clear. “Think I might have lost it.”

“The disconnection..,” Nick breathed, a piece of the puzzle falling into place for him. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

“What does it even matter anymore..,” the other him shrugged sadly.

“It’s important, Nick,” he said carefully, daring a small step forward. “Please.”

His movement startled the synthetic version of himself and Nick could hear the sharp stutter of one of his cooling fans. He seemed...afraid of Nick for some reason. Jesus. Ellie and Nora had been right all along.

They were exactly the same.

“I don’t...D-deacon,” the Great Synth Detective started, waving flippantly as the memory came to him. “He had me on that table in the Railroad’s HQ. Tom overrode my sleep protocols, I think.”

His hands, both good and bad clasped between his knees as his expression changed. The pain was still evident, but as his brows furrowed, Nick could see he was beginning to think now. He needed him thinking now.

“Deacon...he said I had some kinda _lock_ in my system. Something that was preventing them from fixing the damage,” he noted quietly. “I...I asked him to take care of Nora for me.”

His head sank from view beneath the safety of his fedora brim as he shook his head.

“I don’t even know how she got me there,” he confessed miserably. “But she wasn’t...she wasn’t where I could see her when they woke me up.”

He paused and Nick watched his shoulders heave as he took several deep breaths. Nick doubted he even really needed them, but Doctor Birk had done one hell of a job making that body as human as possible. The mind within certainly was human, even if the man didn’t know it yet.

“There was this...surge...or somethin’. Things got dark for a while after that. Quiet,” the other Nick said, deep in reflection. He looked up and surveyed the room now, as if seeing it for the first time. “And then I woke up here.”

“But..,”Nick choked out, aghast at that idea. “It’s been two months. It’s been two months since we were at HQ. All this time...you’ve been here _all_ this time? _Alone_?”

“Where else was I gonna go?” the Great Synth Detective stared directly at Nick now and there was anguish in his yellow gaze. “I can’t _leave_. Nothing to do but sit here and wait.”

“Why?” Nick glanced back at the door to the bedroom, only to find there was no longer a door there. There were no doors in this room at all. 

“She asked me to,” he said, so soft, it was only a breath. “We had a date.”

For a moment, Nick felt an ache in his chest, so strong and so quick, it’d felt like he’d been shot. He wasn’t sure about anything anymore. He hated the way this man was suffering. He hated that he only knew echoes of it. He hated that he couldn’t share the burden.

“You know,” the other him sighed wistfully, offering up his own version of the depreciating smile. It tugged the corner of his lip up on one side, pulling at the tattered skin of his cheek. “I...I used to _dream_ about this place. About a life with Nora, back before the bombs.”

He gave a short snort of a laugh upon the back of a breath. The kind of short laugh someone gives when irony comes back to bite them in the ass. The kind of short laugh someone gives when they realize what a fool they’d been.

“Used to dream I looked a lot like you,” he confessed, wryly.

Nick chanced another step forward and this time, the Great Synth Detective didn’t pull away or flinch. Nick lipped his lips to wet them. His throat felt dry as a desert and lacking right now.

“That’s because you _are_ me,” he said. “We’re the same _person_ , Nick.”

The other him did laugh at that. A short harsh chuckle of disbelief.

“It’s...it’s nice of you to say so, but I, ah..,” he waved Nick off. “Guess I finally know that’s not really true. Doesn’t take a detective to spot the differences between us...what with me and my yellow eyes and you with all that perfect hair.”

“It’s the _truth_ ,” Nick pressed, desperate now to have clarity between them. “I don’t know what happened that caused all this, but we were _never_ separate people and you weren’t just some half-baked copy. If we could just...split the difference on our memories somehow, you’d know I’m not spinning you a yarn here. We could be one person again...share this life like we used to.”

The detective eyed him from just under the brim of his fedora. Nick knew that look. He’d worn it for years on his own face every time he talked himself out of something important. Something personal.

Distance was always safer. The more you let in, the more you had to lose. 

“I appreciate what you’re trying to do here,” the other him shook his head, trying for an amiable tone. “Believe me. But you don’t need me to get what you want anymore. Nora…”

His easy going demeanor broke on her name and he grimaced as he forced the words from his chest. He was trying to surrender and what little dignity he had left was getting in the way. 

“She’s already yours,” he choked out. “With or without me.”

Nick frowned. He felt like he was the one that should be laughing now. He’d been such a fool. A fool for too long who’d been afraid of his own shadow; when he should have remembered, it was _his_ shadow and that meant it belonged.

“You really think I’d want to live like that? Like half the man she wants?” Nick shook his head ruefully. “You really think _she_ wants that?”

“I’m just the parts left over. The garbage, really. You can give her a _real_ heart, Nick Valentine,” the Great Synth Detective told him, his face stricken but still trying for a grin. “A real _life_. She doesn’t need the mechanical one anymore...and I...I’m _happy_ for that.”

He shrugged and forced a laugh.

“Real miracle she took up with a synth like me at all, to be honest. Always thought she deserved more than I could ever give her on my own...and here you are,” he made a wavering gesture at Nick. “Can’t blame her for wanting that. She was always good to me.”

He sighed and tried again for that charming coolness they both put on as armor; when the world was too much and the hurt was unbearable. It just made him look all the more sad in the glow of his yellow eyes.

“Can’t blame you for wanting her either. She..,” he swallowed hard and cleared his throat. “She’s a goddamned angel if I ever met one. Just...make her happy.”

“You’re a damned fool, you know that?” Nick admonished him, though his own voice held no bite to it. “She _loves_ you, Nick. So much that she almost killed herself to save you. So much that she didn’t turn you away when you couldn’t even remember how you first met. So much that she mistakes your name for a love song every damn time she says it!”

He stood before the Great Synth Detective now, feeling more confident than he had been in years. Maybe it was an odd thing to be giving yourself a pep talk, but right now, his other self needed one.

“We’re the _same_ damn guy, whether you want to believe that or not, and Nora, she _knows_ it. She’s _always_ known it,” he spoke adamantly. “She wouldn’t be with _me_ right now if I wasn’t really _you_. She loves _us_... _all_ of us...not just the bits and pieces.”

The synthetic man stared at him a long moment and Nick could see him processing the words. Looking for the loophole. The devil was always in the details; it’s what made them such a good detective and also what made them garbage at living their life.

“I..,” he cringed, eyes dropping from Nick’s when grey eyes stood firm. “I don’t know how to believe that.” 

“Well, _try_ goddamn it,” Nick growled. “Because while you’re alone in here _wanting_ her, your wife’s out there still _waiting_ for you. She’s the one standing at that damn city gate this time and we’re the ones taking our sweet time coming back home.”

His other self gaped. He hadn’t expected that argument.

“Why are you doing this?” he whispered.

“Maybe because I know what you’re going through better than you think I do,” Nick put his hand on the other man’s shoulder and found it not unlike his own. “Maybe it’s because I know you and me are the same guy and I just wanna be whole again.”

He grinned and gave the old trench coat between his fingers a reassuring squeeze.

“Or maybe it’s because I know what it’s like to want to live in another man’s shoes,” he said wryly. “Only to find out they were your shoes all along.”

For a moment, yellow and grey just stared at one another, locked and speaking without words of a shared sorrow and personal understanding. It was something both of them had needed from the other, for a long damn time; acknowledgement.

“You..,” the Great Synth Detective said softly. “You’re a good man, Nick Valentine.”

“We’re the _same_ man, Nick Valentine,” Nick grinned. “Someday I hope you realize that, because you’re not alone anymore. When we figure this whole memory thing out, you’ll know it.”

“I..,” his other self finally conceded. “I’ll try. How’d you get in here, anyway?”

The room was just as doorless as it had been moments ago.

“I, ah...think I fell down the rabbit hole to be honest,” Nick admitted sheepishly. “Can’t say for sure, but it might have been the Jet.”

“Jet?” the other Nick eyed him, lips quirking and slightly amused. “You _sure_ we’re the same guy?”

“It’s a long story,” Nick rolled his eyes. He walked over to the leather couch and sat heavily upon it, kicking up a cloud of dust as he did so. “One we won’t be repeating ever again once we wake up.”

He reached into his pocket and was glad to find a pack of cigarettes and his lighter. He pulled one for himself before offering the Great Synth Detective one of his own.

“This a recreational trip or did someone pull one over on ya?” the other Nick asked, taking a smoke.

“Neither,” Nick shrugged, flicking his lighter open and puffing on the tobacco till it lit. “It was for Hancock.”

“Figures the one time I try chems, John would have to be involved,” the synthetic Nick chuckled, pulling a deep drag off his own cigarette. 

Odd...he almost swore he felt something that time. 

Not just the memory of the nicotine, but the relaxing wave of actual nicotine. His sensors were probably going haywire or something. It’d been awhile since he’d run any kind of diagnostics on himself. All his systems seemed to be offline. 

Nick-on-the-couch was rubbing at his eyes wearily now. He looked exhausted. Like a man who’d spent far too many hours arguing with himself over the years.

Kind of ironic now given the circumstances.

“You gonna be alright?” Nick-in-the-chair asked.

“Let’s hope so,” Nick sighed. “For both our sakes. Seems to have hit me a helluva lot harder than whiskey that’s for sure. Doubt Nora’s gonna let us live this one down.”

The Great Synth Detective held his smoke thoughtfully and went silent. Nick could tell he wanted to ask something. The only question that ever mattered, really.

“Just ask me,” Nick said bluntly.

“How is she?” he finally managed, quietly.

“She’s perfect,” Nick shook his head with a smile. “Couple of new scratches after that firefight with the Courser, but just as beautiful as you left her. She misses you, you know. Even knowing we’re the same person, there’s times when I’ll _say_ something or _do_ something we must have done before and I can just tell...it’s not this body she sees standing there.”

“Sounds complicated,” the other Nick snorted.

“Doesn’t have to be,” Nick admitted.

“Oh yeah?” the Great Synth Detective was watching him now. “How do you figure?”

“You and me get these memories sorted out between us and she gets the whole picture again,” Nick gestured between the two of them. “Same for you and me.”

His other self seemed to be considering that thought seriously.

“Any ideas how?” he finally asked.

“You mean you don’t know?” Nick groaned.

“Sorry, no,” the other Nick shook his head and gestured to the near empty room. “This place didn’t exactly come with a manual.”

“Huh,” Nick frowned. “Now that’s a problem. If you’re not the one causing the trouble and I’m not the one causing the trouble...then what is?”

“Dunno,” the synthetic man offered with a wry grin. “But...but a couple of detectives like us should be able to figure it out, right?”

“So what do we know?” Nick sat up on the couch now. This was familiar. He could work with this.

“Go back to the evidence,” the other Nick said.

“We always go back to the evidence,” Nick agreed.

“That’s right,” the Great Synth Detective looked amused. He gestured towards the cards on the table. “So should we trade hands then?”

Nick lifted the first card on the table and turned it face-side up. The Queen of Spades stared back at them now, both portraits of Amari. On one side she held a human brain and on the other, she held a mechanical one. Both were tied together by a cord.

“According to Amari, you and I have always been one brain split between two bodies,” Nick explained, tapping his finger on the card face. “That brain scan we had back at C.I.T wasn’t quite the science they were selling, if you get what I’m saying. Good old Doctor Birk threw our original body in one of those Cryo-pods like what Nora was in, but he made us a remote body...a synthetic body that we were somehow transmitting our mind to.”

“Well, damn,” the synthetic Nick frowned. Comprehension was finally hitting him if the look on his face was any indication. He looked as if the whole idea were suddenly incredulous. “But that would mean that I’m not…that I _wasn’t_ …”

“I told you. You’re no _copy_ , Nick,” the human Valentine pointed at his counterpart. “We’re one in the same.”

A rough exhale left the synth in one great heave, as if the wind had been forcefully knocked out of him. Nick knew a little of how that felt. Finding out you’re not what you thought you were had that effect on a guy.

“So why the split now?” the synth Nick finally managed to ask once the shock had settled. “What’s caused the mix-up?”

“There’s been some kind of a disconnect,” Nick stated, flipping another card. This one was a joker, holding two ends of a plug between his hands and laughing as he kept them apart. Funny thing that Joker. Looked a hell of a lot like that asshole Doctor Birk.

“How do you figure that?” Nick’s other self frowned at the card before them now.

Nick picked up the Queen of Hearts, holding the side up with the portrait of her in the rose crown.

“Nora,” he said. “At least...the Nora I’ve been dreaming about. I know this’ll sound crazy, but Amari said something back at HQ about the mind trying to sort out all the memories. I think the last time I dreamed of Nora, it was our brain trying to do just that.”

“Not a bad way to deliver that kind of information,” the Great Synth Detective took the card from Nick, holding it between his metal fingers like a delicate and fragile thing. “She tell you anything we can use?”

Nick thought for a long moment, going back over his dreams of the woman in his windowbox. 

“Maybe..,” he said slowly, as memory returned to him. He looked up at his other self. “You have any idea why we dream of her in sunlight?”

“That some kind of code?” the synthetic Valentine cocked a brow at him in confusion.

“I dunno,” Nick sighed, staring at the other cards on the table. “It’s something she asked me. She said we needed to find the connection. Something that started both of our lives.”

“Nora,” his other self said without needing to think about his answer. “It has to be her.”

“I thought so, too,” Nick shook his head. “But it must be something more _specific_ than that, otherwise we wouldn’t be sittin’ here talking to ourselves right now.”

They sat together in silence then, both lost in their own thoughts.

“Sun wasn’t out when I met her,” the other Nick frowned. “It was night by the time she’d pulled me from that Vault. Stars were out…”

“...and it was raining,” Nick finished for him, grinning when the synthetic man glanced up at him. “It’s one of her favorite stories.”

“Yeah, well,” he cleared his tattered throat, the hint of a pleased smile tugging at his lips “I always did like the rain. Can’t say I’ve got anything in the old memory banks with sunlight. Nothing specific anyway.”

“Maybe it’s not literal sunlight,” Nick proposed. “John calls her Sunshine. Maybe it’s something she does, or says?”

“Always did know how to light up a room,” the other Valentine laid her card down on the table with reverence. “Even in the darkest places and times...she was the one star you could count on no matter how cloudy things got.”

“I know what you mean,” the human Valentine said quietly, recalling an afternoon spent on the steps of the Old North Church with an angel. “Your girl’s one in a million, Nick.”

“ _Our_ girl’s worth a helluva lot more than that,” the Great Synth Detective grinned up at his counterpart. As quickly as the smile came upon him though, it faded. There was an absent look to his eyes just then. A worried look. “Really thought I’d lost her for good for a while there. Out there on the street...and after. Think I’d do just about anything to see her one more time now.”

“Hey, don’t talk like that, we’ll figure this out,” Nick reached across the table and patted the other man’s shoulder as Harry had once done for him in the Dugout Inn. “And until we do, you just keep this room open for me. Be a pretty poor set of flatfoots if we can’t solve this mystery, don’t you think?”

“Well, they say two heads are better than one,” the other Nick nodded. “But in this case, the sooner we can get back to being one, the better.”

“I won’t give up on this, so do me a favor and don’t fall back into the doom and gloom act,” Nick eyed him meaningfully. “I know how our mind gets thinkin’ sometimes and I’m not about to let that happen to you. We’re not out of options yet.”

The Great Synth Detective snorted at that and shook his head. It was hard to deny how similar they were, even as he wasn’t sure how to believe they could be the same person when they were sitting across the coffee table staring each other down. He’d been so goddamned afraid of Old Nick and here the man was offering his aid.

Funny how things worked out sometimes. He couldn’t remember anymore why he’d wasted so much time trying to be someone else. Nick Valentine wasn’t a bad guy to be in the end.

He hoped he might be that guy again someday soon.

“Just, ah, just do me a favor would ya?” the synthetic Valentine asked shyly. “The next time you see Nora, I mean.”

“Anything,” Nick promised.

The synth Nick swallowed hard, looking for the right words. He’d had months to compose long letters to her in his head and now that he had a chance to send his words her way, he couldn’t think of any of them.

Not that it mattered. There was only one thing he really wanted her to know, anyhow.

“Tell her I miss her,” he said quietly. “And that I’m sorry...my clock seems to be running a bit slow.”

“You’ll have to explain that one to me sometime,” Nick grinned.

“If we can figure out this whole memory business,” the other Nick shrugged. “Then I won’t need to.”

Nick’s grin slipped before he could say anything in return. He stared ahead glassy eyed before shaking it off and rubbing at his forehead in irritation.

“What’s the matter?” the synthetic Valentine asked. “You alright there?”

“Dunno...think I might be waking up,” Nick yawned, unable to help it. He blinked wearily at his other self and smiled. “Just keep thinkin’ about that sunlight…”

Nick slid the Queen of Hearts towards his counterpart. Both portraits were smiling now and a crown of sunlight sat behind the roses. In one hand, she held a heart, but whether it was mechanical or not, it was impossible to tell. The heart in both portraits was bright pink and glowed like it was made out of neon, with a cupid’s arrow struck through the center of each.

“You, too,” the Great Synth Detective murmured to the now empty room.

He sat a long while, staring at the cards on the table, wondering if the conversation with his other self had really just happened or if he was finally starting to crack in the forced solitude of his imprisonment. He wanted to believe what that other Nick had told him; that the life he’d known, the life he’d always been so conflicted about, wasn’t just a copy of another man’s memories. 

A brain shared between two bodies; one flesh and one synthetic. It explained so much.

The disconnect he always felt between the wires in his chest and the heart he’d always known belonged there. The desire to be a _real_ man, to be _seen_ as a real man, to _know_ he was a real man despite the tears in his synthetic skin and the visible steel of his right hand. The knowledge that he hadn’t lost Nora to a better version of himself, just a part of himself he couldn’t remember yet. That he might someday have the chance to stand beside her, finally whole and safe in the awareness that he was at long last the man he always wanted to be. The man he always felt he might be.

Good god, how he wanted to see her again now. Wanted to hold her and kiss her and feel her heart beating against his own. To be able to grow old with her and breathe her air and to live a life with her without the fear that his feelings were somehow just programming. That ones and zeroes weren’t the sum of his parts and that blood ran hot through his veins instead of coolant.

To sleep beside her, to _really_ sleep beside her, and know what it meant to wake up with her in his arms without the clock in his head counting milliseconds.

It was a beautiful kind of dream.

He wanted that life.

Behind him, the light from the window shifted from the dull grey clouds he’d grown accustomed to living in. Soft, golden sunlight filtered into the room and while it might have been a glitch in his system, the leather couch didn’t seem as worn all of a sudden and the coffee table was free from the thick layer of dust that had lived there for so long.

He turned in his chair and his fans stuttered, missing a cooling cycle.

Nora lay there on the window bench; sleeping. Gone were the inky black coolant stains, the pools of blood and the bruises. Gone were the cuts and scrapes and skin so pale it was ghostly. She lay, perfect and beautiful and peaceful in that cream-colored dress she’d married him in, with a crown of red roses and purple hubflowers woven into her dark hair. 

She lay there in the sunlight, silver ring winking on the third finger of her left hand. For all the world, Nick needed another word for her than beautiful. Beautiful wasn’t a strong enough word for the angel that was his wife.

“Wait for me, Nora,” he pleaded quietly, taking her hand in his own and pressing it to his lips. “I’m still here, and someday, I’ll make good on that promise to meet you back home.”

His metal fingers stroked her cheek, brushing a strand of hair back and behind her ear, before following its path until steel ghosted over her collarbone.

“Even remembered the flowers this time,” he whispered, pulling one of the roses from her hair and setting it in his lapel.

Though the angel in the window continued sleeping and the Great Synth Detective returned to his vigil by her side, in the quiet of that little apartment between Monroe and Third, one by one, the broken clocks that filled the room started ticking again.


	31. Where She Dreams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Saturday! I'll try and get another chapter up tonight or tomorrow morning for you! In the meantime, please enjoy this one!

Nick woke to the smell of whiskey and cigarettes.

His head felt awful.

“ _Ugh_ ,” he groaned, struggling to sit up. _Everything_ hurt. Especially his head.

“Rough night?” Hancock laughed, full and rasping and somewhere out of view.

“John?” Nick asked groggily. “What time is it?”

“No worries, Sleeping Beauty,” the ghoul’s voice sounded amused. “It ain’t that late. Ain’t that early either. Just goin’ to noon.”

“ _Christ_ ,” the detective rubbed at his brow and turned, nearly rolling off the couch cushions and onto the floor. It earned him another chuckle from the Mayor. “Feels like I got hit by a truck.”

“Jet not agree with ya?” Hancock snorted. Nick could hear the soft shift of his boots across the old wood floors and the clinking of glass. “Can’t say I’m surprised. That shit ain’t for lightweights. My own special formula.”

Squinting as he lay on his back, the ghoul suddenly appeared in Nick’s narrow vision, blissfully blocking out some of the sunlight streaming in through the boards on the windows. He held the bottle of whiskey Nora had brought with them the night before in one ruined hand and a pair of glasses in the other.

“Come on, Nick, up and at ‘em,” Hancock grinned down at him, his black eye crinkled in glee. “Little drink for breakfast will clear that right up.”

He was gone from Nick’s sight as quickly as he’d come, and the sunlight was upon him again. Nick pressed his palms to his eyes for one long indulgent moment and then forced himself into a sitting position. Nora’s soft grey blanket fell away from him and after a moment of untangling himself from it’s warmth, Nick swung his legs away from the cushions and stumbled up onto his feet. 

The sensation was worse once he was standing.

“Right this way, brother,” Hancock laughed, directing Nick to a set of chairs near the out of place coffee table. “Gotta celebrate that first hit the morning after. Ain’t never gonna feel that sweet kind of high again.”

“Thank god,” Nick grumbled, shuffling over to the table and flopping down into one of the seats.

Hancock poured him two full fingers of the whiskey before filling a glass for himself.

“Cheers,” he clinked their glasses together, knocking his back in one long gulp before pouring himself another.

“Little early for hard drinkin’, isn’t it?” Nick cringed, sipping carefully at his own glass. The smooth burn worked its way down his throat and much to his surprise, the warmth it flooded him with took most of the pain with it. He downed another sip and the haze he’d woken under left him for the haze brought on by the whiskey on his empty stomach. “Been a long while since I went in for the early bird special.”

“What can I say?” John shrugged. “You gotta pay tribute to the little things. Life is good.”

“Be better with a bit more in my stomach than that hooch,” Nick said wryly.

“Ask and you shall receive,” Hancock rasped smoothly. He pushed a basket across the table Nick hadn’t taken notice of previously. It was full to the brim with some kind of fresh bread and fruit tarts. “Lady of the Commonwealth don’t let no man go hungry, ‘specially her own. Picked ‘em up from that new shop down in the quarter this mornin’ before she headed out.”

“Where is she?” Nick glanced up at Hancock, stopping mid-reach towards a tart, the fruit of which he thought he recognized from his days of shopping with Ellie. 

“Still in town,” John assured him, pulling out a small tin of Mentats from his coat pocket and casually popping two into his mouth. “That girl ain’t known for sleepin’ in and she wasn’t keen on wakin’ ya. She’s got a lotta friends in Goodneighbor. Tends to check up on ‘em when she stops by. Said somethin’ bout visitin’ old Kent while you were dreamin’.”

Hancock nudged the basket closer to Nick.

“You get sorted and I’ll take ya down there,” he chuckled. “Nora’ll have my head if you’re anythin’ less than pristine, you feel me?”

Nick nodded between bites of the tart. His stomach lurched in enjoyment the moment he swallowed down the first chunk. It was a sweet and sour sort of fruit jam and the dough was oddly savory. Nick had no idea where the buttery taste in the pastry was coming from, considering he’d yet to see anything like milk or cream in the Diamond City Marketplace. Even so, different as it tasted, it was good and quelled the hungry nausea he’d woken up with. John poured him another finger of whiskey as Nick helped himself to a couple of soft rolls.

As he tore into the first roll, he stopped. Hancock was staring at him with a queer sort of interest.

“There a problem?” Nick swallowed, pleasantly surprised to find that the roll had a tang of sweetness to it as well.

“Sorry,” Hancock snickered. “It’s just...all these years and sittin’ here, I realized I ain’t never seen you eat before.”

“Guess I didn’t go in for that sorta thing in the other body,” Nick smiled a bit crookedly. “Probably didn’t need it.”

“Well, you need it now, so eat up,” John said, his teeth showing brightly. “Don’t mind me. Still changin’ my take on ya. Kinda...fascinatin’ to watch now. Ain’t never seen a guy your size put it away like that.”

“What can I say, I’m a growing boy,” Nick shrugged, mouth full up with bread. “Who’s Kent?”

“An old ghoul buddy of hers,” Hancock fished a pack of cigarettes off the table and pulled one out. “He’s what you might call a _permanent_ resident of the Memory Den. Kent’s harmless, but he and Nora are tight. You two pulled his ass out of the fire back in the day. He ain’t forgot that.”

Nick swallowed hard. 

The _Memory Den_. Amari was there, wasn’t she?

“What’s a matter, Nick?” John sat forward as he pulled his first drag and blew smoke. “Lookin’ a bit pale there. Jet still fuckin’ with ya?”

“Somethin’ like that,” Nick shook his head before washing down the roll with more whiskey. “Dunno how you stomach the stuff.”

Hancock laughed, his voice loud and scratchy. His red coat and hat were back in place alongside the man-who-ruled-the-world attitude he carried so well. The Mayor looked every bit as intimidating as he had when they’d first met back at the Railroad HQ; not a trace of the fear left from the night before in his presence. He looked good.

Nick was happy for that.

“That hit ya took wasn’t the standard for good times, if you get me,” John shook his head. “My own variant on Rocket. Not as clean as ol’ fashioned Jet, but it helps knock you on your ass when the everyday shit ain’t cuttin’ it. Tends to be one of those medicinal _only_ kinda highs. Gave Nora a stash of it, just in case I ever ran out. Bit hardcore for you lightweights.”

“I’ll remember that for next time,” Nick snorted.

“Seriously though, when you took that hit? Gotta say, I was _impressed_ ,” Hancock beamed at him like a kid on Christmas. “Old Nick Valentine takin’ a breath of Rocket. Never thought I’d live to see the day your tight ass would be all chemed up and passed out on my floor.”

“I’ve learned my lesson,” Nick pulled out his own set of smokes now and lit one. The nicotine wash was ridiculously relaxing after all the whiskey. “Think I’ll leave the chems to you professionals from now on.”

“All jokin’ aside,” John stared at his mottled hands, a mild look of shame setting in on his features. “I owe you one, Nick. A big one. Thanks. For everything.”

Nick shook his head.

“You don’t ever have to thank me for that, John,” he said honestly. “You’re family. Always have been, always will be. Nora and I are here when you need us.”

The words John had once uttered to Nick back at HQ drifted between them now and whatever melancholy that had tried to settle over Hancock dissipated immediately. He grinned broadly, the white of his teeth against his ruined skin making him look all the more ghoulish.

“All the same,” John held up what was left of his glass of whiskey and saluted him. “You’re a good man, Nick. You? You’re always welcome in my town.”

“Better be,” Nick chuckled. “You still owe me a drink down at that bar of yours.”

“Truer words were never spoken,” Hancock put back the rest of his whiskey and licked what little remained of his lips. “But the Third Rail don’t show all of her charm until the late night hours, and you and me got a date with Doc Amari before we can get to the real fun.”

“Oh yeah?” Nick stubbed out the remains of his cigarette in the cracked glass ashtray on the table.

“Can’t hide nothin’ from that _woman_ ,” the Mayor moaned and crossed his arms over his chest indignantly. “Already sent one of her people up here to make sure our little party stopped by her place today.”

Hancock sighed.

“Can’t say I blame her though,” he shrugged. “Been puttin’ off continuin’’ the treatments with her for long enough. Think it’s time to get back to ‘em.”

“Good on you, John,” Nick offered him a reassuring smile. 

“Yeah, well, don’t got throwin’ me a parade or nothin’ yet,” he waved Nick off, dismissively. “Chances are I’ll get bored with ‘em again and you’ll be back to huffin’ Jet on my floor in a couple of months.”

“Can’t hurt to try, though,” Nick chuckled. “Might save me from another round of your _medicinal_ chems for a couple more weeks at the very least.”

“Hey, you ain’t off the hook either, brother,” Hancock smirked. “Doc didn’t just call in my name this mornin’. She heard you were in town. Ya ain’t gettin’ outta here without her say so or there’ll be hell to pay.”

“Probably wants to know if my head’s back on straight,” Nick snorted.

“Is it?” John asked seriously.

“Not yet,” Nick said thoughtfully. “But I’m working on it.”

“Well, get your shit and we’ll work on it over there,” Hancock stood up in all his smooth grace and gestured at the cushions still on the floor. “Gotta get this crap back in order before anyone questions what the hell we were on about last night.”

“Don’t know what you mean, John,” Nick stood and helped him rearrange the furniture before grabbing his shoes and coat. “Just getting hammered and reminiscing about the old times between friends.”

“Always down for a party with my nearest and dearest,” John winked, and though charming, the effect was lessened now on account of his eye patch.

They had the room back to its usual squalor--according to John--in record time and Nick borrowed the little closet bathroom to get himself the rest of the way sorted before they headed out onto the streets.

Goodneighbor was an entirely different place in the daylight hours and Nick couldn’t help but gawk as they stepped out of the State House and into the heart of Hancock’s town. To hear John tell it, the free city was still something of a cesspit, a den of debauchery and lawlessness that he’d taken a soft broom to. John was full of shit, however.

Nick didn’t doubt Goodneighbor had been a rough bit of Commonwealth real estate back in the day, but the Mayor’s efforts to clean the place up into a refuge for the lost were evident in spades. Shop fronts and food stalls lined the streets, with ghouls and humans alike buying, selling and eating together. A couple of rough looking men stood by what Nick assumed was Goodneighbor’s new bakery, passing fruit tarts to the pair of mismatched kids--one blond haired, one pitch black--who were rapturously giving their thanks and calling both of the thugs “dad”. 

Hancock introduced him to a ghoul named Daisy, the owner of an odds and ends shop who had known Nick previously and regaled him with a story about himself and Nora and a book they’d braved a library full of super mutants to return for her. Nick decided he liked Daisy and her breezy attitude towards the apocalypse. Before they made their apologies and headed on, she handed Nick a a set of blue carnival glass salt and pepper shakers with little strawberries embossed into the sides for Nora. After a little detective work and a set of questions tempered by his most charming smile, Daisy informed him that she’d been the one supplying new additions to Nora’s collection over the years after finding out Nora’s apartment back before the bombs had once been filled with the stuff--some kind of annual gifts to mark her birthday from her older brother.

Nick wrapped them in an old handkerchief he’d taken to carrying around in his pocket that he’d found in one of his drawers back at Home Plate, and, after thanking Daisy profusely, he and Hancock moved on. 

They walked passed a store appropriately named “Guns, Guns, Guns!” which seemed to carry every kind of shooter and bullet a man could need out in the Commonwealth. When Hancock tipped his hat at the Assaultron standing behind the counter, Nick followed suit. He would have sworn he heard the bot respond “Oh, you boys.” in a mechanical, yet flirtatious tone.

As they moved into the town square, Nick took note of the myriad of people sitting out on the benches. A pair of old ghouls, each dressed in sharply mended three piece suits, were playing at a game of chess on one; their Tommy guns propped up just beside them and forgotten for the moment. On another, a ghoul woman with stylish blond hair and a fast boy sense of fashion was coquettishly seated beside a rather handsome, if rather heavy set, looking fella with a deep scar across his nose. A pair of kids, a little girl with unruly brown-red curls too big for her head and a slightly older ghoul boy in an old pair of rolled up jeans, were drawing sharp-toothed monsters on the sidewalk with scraps of teacher’s chalk.

John stopped to talk with one of the gun ghouls standing outside the entrance to the Third Rail as they went by. At first glance, Nick thought it might be Oscar, but was glad he hadn’t called out when he realized this ghoul’s eyes were nearly as black as John’s and he was a whole head taller than the ghoul who’d walked to Diamond City had been. 

Nick felt a bit embarrassed at how long it was taking him to adjust to the ghouls. He knew in his head they were nothing like the ferals he’d faced upon waking, and despite the ruined skin and lack of noses, they were as individual as any other person in the world. Even so, he tried not to stare, much as his curiosity wanted him to. He supposed it was much like when John was watching him eat this morning. There was nothing malicious about it; just needed some time to adjust his take on them, because for Nick, they were new.

Beyond the town square, traders, both from Goodneighbor and not, hawked their wares: scavenged furniture and clothing, bits of scrap and outright junk. There was even a fat old ghoul with a thick accent and a 10mm strapped to his hip, giving men shaves under the skeletal remains of a barbershop pole and the bright blue sky above. 

It may not have had the ballpark lights of the Great Green Jewel, and the Neighborhood Watch were certainly dressed slicker and more heavily armed than the Diamond City guards, but Goodneighbor had grown to have a charm all it’s own. Nick could understand now why John and Nora spoke so fondly of it, and for a moment, he wondered if the Lady of the Commonwealth had ever given thought to living in the free city herself. He wondered if he’d never gotten up the nerve to ask her to be his partner, if she’d have taken up residence in one of the converted warehouse apartments and spent her days passing time with her ghoul friends. He wondered if she’d have come running to Diamond City in the middle of the night if Nick had been the one that needed her.

He didn’t really have to wonder though. He knew without a doubt that she would’ve done just that.

Slowed in their progress by the many people who greeted Hancock with a mixture of awe and respect as they walked through town, John led Nick to a flashy looking building beside the Hotel Rexford. Nick realized with some amusement as they neared it, that the Memory Den had once been an old gentlemen’s club, the tattered posters along its walls still proclaiming, “Girls, girls girls!” to its would be patrons. From what Nora and his pals at HQ had told him of the place, it seemed fitting. A house made for fantasies turned real. A place where people went to forget, as much as they went to remember.

Nick was hoping for the latter today.

As John reached for the door handle, a scraggly looking man with a milky eye and a suit worn long past its expiry date blew smoke in their direction. His lips twisted upward in a foul sort of manner, making him appear more ghastly than any of the ghouls with their ruined skin. His mouth was full up of rotten teeth, much like his personality.

“Well, well,” he cackled. His voice was as ugly as the rest of him. “Looking mighty fine today, Mister Mayor. Word around town’s you had one of your late night shindigs. Even saw your little bird fly by this morning.”

“What can I say. I’m a sentimental type a guy,” and though the corners of John’s mouth rose when he spoke, it was as false as the tone of cheer in his rasp. “Ain’t no better time for chems and war stories than after Midnight, Moss.”

“ _Lotta_ things get better with chems after Midnight. Reputation like yours, ain’t surprised you got even the _caged_ ones flyin’ in for an evening,” the man’s lip curled knowingly. He turned to Nick then. “Enjoy watching the show, Mister Valentine?”

Nick caught hold of John’s fist before it could swing. 

Easing his arm smoothly around John’s waist, he gave the stranger a cool and clever sort of stare. The one he’d always reserved for the guys on the force that annoyed him, or the criminals who claimed they wouldn’t talk, only to be blubbering their whole life story to Nick after an hour under that gaze and the hot lights. The one that had always made people assume he had a sordid reputation of his _own_ back in the day.

“Who says I like to _watch_?” Nick’s voice ran of velvet; of thick cream as it mixed into the blackest late night coffee. “Not that I’m questioning _your_ preferences, friend, but I was always more of an in the _field_ type myself.”

The man’s jaw couldn’t have dropped lower if he’d been a snake. 

“Now if you’ll excuse us,” Nick slid away from John and opened the door to the Memory Den. “Got a coupla things I wouldn’t mind reliving. Not as virile the day after as I used to be, what with needing to sleep and all now. After you, Hancock.”

John flashed him a broad and wicked grin before tipping his tricorne at the stupefied street dweller and strutting through the door. Nick didn’t bother tipping his hat as he followed this time. 

“Forget what I said before,” John swatted him firmly on the back the moment the door shut behind them. Even in the low light of the vestibule, Nick could clearly see the delight twisting the Mayor’s features. “You? You drink at the Third Rail for free _anytime_.”

“Yeah, well,” Nick said sheepishly. “Might need to once I explain _that_ one to Nora.”

“Moss is a piece of shit,” Hancock shook his head. “I would’ve laid him flat for ya.”

“And ruin your reputation?” Nick chuckled. “You’ll have ‘em lining up outside your office now.”

“As if I don’t already,” Hancock snorted. “Comon’. Let’s go find your girl.”

Nick took pleasure in the way John said that. Like it was just a fact. A fact like his brother’s gold watch.

He followed the Mayor, passing the old posters and the coat check room and into the converted theatre. With the tattered velvet curtains, bright red doors and the fancy chandelier barely clinging to the ceiling, it still made a fine play at being a den of iniquity, even with all the glass eggs and computer equipment lying about. The blond dame in the bustier and feathered jacket reclining on one of the couches set center stage completed the look.

“Why, Mayor Hancock,” she purred as they neared her. “Always a pleasure to have you in our fine establishment.”

“Lookin’ fine as always, Irma,” John rasped back, low and flirting. “Doc Amari around?”

“She might be,” Irma cooed, leaning forward with interest and letting her assets put on a show. “Business or pleasure?”

“Always was a fan of mixin’ the two, myself,” Hancock laughed. “Got an appointment today, though.”

“Well, I’m sure she’ll be along in a minute for you then, Hun,” the woman hummed in approval. Her kohl washed eyes set on Nick then. “I can keep your handsome guest entertained while you and the good Doctor are busy.”

If eyes could eat a person, Nick was sure she’d already have devoured half his leg.

“Don’t think you want to entertain this one, Irma,” John smirked. “Not with his old lady hangin’ out with Kent back there.”

Irma’s eyes grew wide for a moment before her ruby red lips spread out into a salacious grin.

“As I live and breathe,” she gasped seductively. “I’d heard from Amari you were looking different these days, Nick, but she _vastly_ underplayed _how_ different.”

“Still me underneath it all,” he graced her with a charming, but wary smile. “Paint’s just another color these days.”

“Mmm,” Irma chuckled, leaning back on her crimson chaise. “Well, I’d invite you to a private session so we could see if you missed any spots, but your little morning dove grew claws since she put that ring around your finger.”

She looked at him through sly and narrowed eyes.

“Which you don’t seem to be wearing at the moment,” Irma uttered, allure dripping from her tone. “You back on the free market now that you’ve got that new... _paint_ job, Detective?”

Nick blushed and tucked his hands into his trouser pockets.

“Still happily married,” he coughed out, ignoring John’s amusement. “Nora’s carrying mine until we can find a replacement for hers. Fell off the last time she killed a man.”

Irma blanched.

“Yes, well, she is quite the little spitfire when she needs to be, isn’t she. You’ll find her with our dear Kent behind that door over there,” Irma nodded with her head towards one of the red doors to Nick’s right, just as Amari stepped out from behind the curtains.

“Don’t take Irma seriously, Nicholas,” Amari chuckled. “She’s been a hopeless flirt since the day she was born.”

“Can’t blame a girl for trying,” Irma winked at her business partner. “Little show always keeps ‘em coming back for more.”

“How have you been doing?” Amari addressed Nick again. “Nora mentioned this morning that your memory hasn’t fully returned yet.”

“It’s, ah...kind of a long story, Doc,” he admitted with a shrug. “Got a couple a questions I’m hoping you might have some answers for.”

“Most certainly, I’m at your disposal,” Amari nodded. “But first, I’d like to start Mayor Hancock’s treatment, if that’s alright with you. The aversion therapy is very effective, but the sessions are quite long and I try not to keep John from his...nightly activities if I can.”

“Less chance I’ll come back if it starts cuttin’ into my good times,” Hancock smirked at Nick.

“I can imagine,” Nick shook his head in amusement. “You two go on and get started. I’d like to have a word with Nora before we get to it anyhow.”

Amari pulled back the curtain and gestured John to follow her up a set of stairs. 

“Shall we head to your private room, then?” Amari quirked an eyebrow.

“You make that sound way sexier than this is gonna be,” John grumbled at her, but followed suit. He turned back to Nick before he rounded the curtain. “I’ll meet up with the two of ya tonight for that drink. Gonna be a hell of a party.”

“Lookin’ forward to it,” Nick nodded and watched him go. He tipped his hat to the lady on the chaise before heading for Kent’s room. “Miss Irma.”

“That girl of yours is a lucky woman, Nick,” she called after him, a laugh in her sweet tone. “Bet half the women in the Commonwealth are regretting they never saw the gold you had hidden under all that steel before.”

“Takes a special kinda woman to see the man underneath it all,” his eyes lit up as he spoke. “Never thought I’d ever amount to anything more than brass.”

“Pure gold, Honey,” Irma waved goodbye coyly. “Pure gold.”

Nick shook his head at that thought and wondered, not for the first time, how much his life had changed.

He took hold of the door handle to Kent’s room and gave a little knock before stepping inside and stopping just beyond his first step.

The room he now stood in was...colorful to say the least. Posters, cutouts, bedsheets, the works: the entire place looked like some kind of museum to that old pulp hero, The Silver Shroud. There were piles of his comic books on the shelves, dog-eared copies of the magazine books they used to sell at the newsstands on the dresser and framed copies of movie scripts, complete with the lead actor’s signature, hanging on the walls. 

Well...everybody has a hobby.

At the back of the narrow room, Nora sat in her thin t-shirt and jeans across from the squirreliest looking fella Nick had ever seen. He wasn’t very tall and as ghouls went, he had one of those faces that suggested he hadn’t been much better off before the radiation had gotten to him. His shoulders were permanently rounded forward, making the little paunch of his belly much more pronounced. His suit was once light in color and looked patched up enough that he’d probably been wearing it since the bombs fell, or so Nick imagined. The light blue sweater he wore under his sports coat had seen better days, as Nora sat sewing the threadbare cuff back into the rest of it as they talked. His shoes looked surprisingly new though; a smart pair of brown and white spectators that belied the rest of his attire.

“Bit of a fan, eh?” he said, clearing his throat, when the other two residents in the room failed to notice him. Their conversation immediately came to a halt, and both looked to him in surprise. “Sorry, I, ah, I did knock.”

“Nah, don’t even worry about it,” the frumpy ghoul waved him off with an easy hand. “I get talking so much sometimes I forget I got a door. Not too many people come through just to see me, y’know?”

“How are you feeling?” Nora asked, biting off the thread after she’d knotted it, and turning her full attention to Nick. Her tone was light, but there was worry for him in those blue eyes of hers. “Sleep well?”

“I’m fine, Doll,” he smiled warmly at her. “Really. John got me sorted once I woke. Thanks for thinking of breakfast, though. The whiskey wasn’t quite the coffee I’m used to starting with.”

“John doesn’t believe there’s a time and place for alcohol,” she said, the sparkle in her eyes pulling at her lips. “Just that it’s _always_ the time and place for alcohol.”

“Funny,” he snorted. “I got that impression, too.”

The little ghoul sitting next to Nora was staring at Nick now, an excited and almost childlike look in his eyes.

“Hey! I hope you don’t mind me sayin’ this, but,” he cocked his head up from his bent shoulders with a goofy smile. “With that trench coat and hat you just remind me of somebody.”

“The Silver Shroud?” Nick arched a brow playfully and threw his thumb in the direction of the life-sized cut out standing beside him. 

“What? No, no. You don’t look a thing like her,” Kent shook his head. “I was gonna say Nick Valentine. He’s a good buddy of mine.”

“Her?” Nick said slyly, narrowing his eyes at Nora. 

She winked back at him. The little tart. Now he knew why that hat she had back at the office looked so familiar...and the goddamned bedsheets. He wasn’t going to let her weasel her way out of telling him _this_ story when they got back home.

“It _is_ Nick, Kent,” Nora said patiently, ignoring the smug looks Nick was tossing her as if he’d just discovered her secret identity.

“No fooling?” Kent’s eyes flickered in his shock. “Wow, what happened?”

“It’s a long story,” she assured him. “But, Nick’s human now.”

“Kinda human to start with,” Nick smirked. “Mind’s been trapped in that synthetic shell for years on account of some crazy scientist.”

“Jeez, that sounds just like episode 43 where Doctor Brainwash switched the Silver Shroud’s mind with one of his robots and The Shroud had to convince the other Unstoppables that it was really him in one of the De-Capitalist’s bodies!”

“Uh, yeah..,” Nick nodded, though he had no idea what the man was talking about now. “It’s been more or less like that.”

Despite his odd re-introduction to Kent, Nick found the little ghoul to be a nice sort of guy, albeit, a funny sort of guy. He spoke animatedly about everything and when Nora explained that Nick was still shy on some of his memories, Kent regaled them with a complete history of Goodneighbor, from start to finish. He even let the new Silver Shroud’s origin story slip as he told the tale of how he’d come to meet Nick and Nora back in the day, and how they’d saved his life from some punk named Sinjin.

“You should’ve seen it, Nick!” Kent told him spiritedly. “I mean...you _did_ see it, you were there, but...you know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean,” Nick reassured him.

“You guys burst through that door and after The Shroud scared off Sinjin’s lackey’s, she shot him straight between the eyes before he could even think about pulling the trigger!” Kent beamed.

“My aim wasn’t that good yet,” Nora confessed in a whisper. “I caught him in the shoulder. You got him between the eyes.”

“I dunno,” Nick gave her hand an affectionate squeeze from where he sat beside her on Kent’s bed. “Kinda prefer the official version, even if the Shroud had a little help in the end.”

Nora flushed and rested her head against his shoulder, stroking the back of his hand with her thumb as Kent continued on with his tales of how Goodneighbor became a truly great refuge for the outcasts in the Commonwealth. If Nora was the Angel with White Wings, Hancock was an avenging demon in a red coat, raining hellfire down on the dregs of society and would-be crime lords that had been stinking up the joint. To hear Kent tell it, the Mayor was secretly one of the Unstoppables in disguise, reborn in the radiation to take care of evildoers and protect the good people of the free city.

“I even got fans now,” Kent told them proudly. “Lotta the kids in the neighborhood tune in every evening to listen to my broadcasts. Hey, you know what’d be great? If the Silver Shroud made another appearance around town some night. You know...for the kids.”

“She might just have to do that sometime,” Nora winked at him. “If I see her, I’ll be sure to let her know.”

“Aw, that’d be swell! Real swell!,” he glowed. “All that good the three of us did back in the day and look at the city now! Always knew the people just needed something to believe in again. Between you and the Mayor, we don’t gotta worry about nothing anymore.”

“Make a helluva comic book, that’s for sure,” Nick chuckled.

“Glad to see you in such good spirits today, Kent-dear,” Irma cooed at them from where she leaned against the doorframe. “Having a good time?”

“Aw, the best!” Kent beamed at her. “I can’t wait to do the broadcast tonight. Think I’m gonna tell the tale of the Silver Shroud checkin’ in to make sure all the bad guys out there know she’s still watchin’ her favorite town!”

“That sounds wonderful, Sweetie,” she smiled warmly at him. A real smile. “Much as I hate to break up your party, Doctor Amari’s asking to see these two downstairs. Mind if I borrow them for a bit?”

“Oh man, not at all,” Kent turned back to Nick and Nora. “I didn’t mean to keep ya. I know how busy you two can be.”

“Never too busy for you, Kent,” Nora stood and gave him a hug. “Keep watch for me out there and if you ever need the Shroud, I’ll let her know to come running.”

“Sure thing,” he grinned. “What’s the Shroud without Rhett Reinhart on the lookout for her?”

“Not a thing,” Nora assured him.

“It was a pleasure, Kent,” Nick offered his hand. “Again. Hope the next time we meet I’ll remember all those adventures we had together.”

“You’ll get it back someday, Mister Valentine,” Kent shook Nick’s hand vigorously, as if it were the first time he’d been allowed to do so and was excited for the chance. “The Unstoppables defeated Doctor Brainwash in episode 44 and got the Shroud’s brain back outta the robot. You got a real life superhero at your side. I’m sure she’ll help you do the same.”

“That she will,” Nick slid his free hand into his wife’s, and as soon as Kent released him, they parted ways with the little ghoul.

“Got anything she can help with right now?” Nora murmured to him as they followed Irma to the stage and made their way to Amari’s underground office.

“Might at that,” he pulled her close and kissed her forehead. “Let’s have a chat with Amari first. Got some things I wanna run by her. Some things I don’t think you’ll like hearing.”

“Should I be worried?” Nora asked, biting her lip.

“No, Doll,” he shook his head. “It’s nothing like that, just...I had a dream last night and I’ve gotta feeling it wasn’t really a dream.”

“Let’s talk with Amari,” Nora opened the door to Amari’s private office and ushered Nick inside.

The basement room of the Memory Den was a large square in which various blue-lacquered computers hummed and beeped amid filing cabinets and a pair of memory pods with glass domed tops; both empty and waiting for their next inhabitants. The red and white checked linoleum floor had seen better days, as had the coffee-brown rug that tried to cover the worst of it’s damage, but it was cosier than the former strip club upstairs. Much like the woman who resided in it, Amari’s office looked neat and orderly, despite the Commonwealth decor.

The good Doctor stood expectantly from her desk when they entered. 

“How’s John doing?” Nick asked, before delving into his own nightmares.

“Mayor Hancock is doing well,” Amari said in earnest. “If we can get him to continue the treatments this time, I have no doubt we can lessen the effects of his ordeal. I’m hoping you two may be able to help me with that.”

“We’ll certainly try,” Nick said with a wry smile.

“Regardless, he’ll no doubt be ready to get back to his overindulgent lifestyle by this evening, no worse for wear,” she gave a small, knowing laugh before returning to the matter at hand. “But how are you doing? You said you had some questions.”

“Might have understated the number a bit,” Nick admitted, apologetically. 

“And you’ve stopped regaining memory,” Amari was looking at him with a clinical eye now. “When did you first notice this happening?”

“That...might tie in with some of my questions,” he cringed. This wasn’t going to be an easy conversation, especially with Nora in the room. “You said Lola had downloaded all the memories into my brain...that I wasn’t missing anything, that I just couldn’t access them.”

“That’s correct,” Amari nodded. “The memories are most definitely all there, but why you haven’t regained them yet is a bit more perplexing.”

“About that,” he glanced at Nora, noting she was watching him with that careful gaze of hers. “What if I, ah...what if I _couldn’t_ get them back. Not on account of the memories not being there…”

He swallowed hard. His tongue felt thick in his mouth right then.

“But, because the memories were still kinda..,” he gestured weakly. “ _Living_ in there.”

“Living in there..?” Nora frowned.

“What do you mean by that?” Amari asked, intrigued.

“Might, ah,” Nick rubbed the back of his neck with a hand nervously. “Might want to sit down for this one Doc. It’s kind of a long yarn to spin and...it’s gonna sound crazy, but I swear it’s true.”

The women looked at one another for a moment, before Amari pulled out two more seats for them.

An hour later, Nick had told them more or less what had been going on in his head when he’d been sleeping; less, because he’d left out some more of the sordid details he felt might be a little _too_ private to share with the good Doctor, nice as she was. 

He told them about always waking in his apartment down on Monroe and Third; about the sunlight and the way he always found Nora waiting for him in that bay window. He told them how the Nora in his dreams explained there’d been some sort of disconnect between himself and his old memories, and that the key to fixing his head troubles lay in some kind of riddle he needed to solve. A riddle that had an answer that both he and the synth version of himself would recognize.

He paused before continuing, his eyes dropping to the floor as he told him about last night, after he’d taken the Jet. About how he’d woken in the office and assumed it was a memory trying to break through. About how he’d stumbled back into his old apartment and the destruction and dust is now sat in. 

He told them about meeting another Nick Valentine and how the Great Synth Detective had been stuck living in that room in his head for the last two months.

_Alone._

Nora didn’t take it well.

“Oh god,” she whispered, letting her head fall slowly to her knees. “He’s been trapped in there this _whole_ time..by _himself_ , in that...that room?”

“He only seems to have been aware of what happened until we deactivated at HQ,” Nick said softly. He wanted so badly to reach out to her now. To comfort her. He wasn’t sure anymore if she’d even accept him as he was. “But we...he’s aware of it now.”

“Oh god,” she cried. The tears were rolling in streams down her cheeks and dripping in soft taps upon the floor. Each one that fell broke Nick’s heart that much more. “I can’t even imagine...two _months_...he must be so lonely…”

“He’s...still thinking of you, Doll,” Nick murmured, looking shamefully at where his hands rested in his lap. “Still thought he was a copy, too. Didn’t know we were one in the same.” 

Much as he’d told the other Nick living in his head that she loved them both, Nick, himself, wasn’t so sure anymore. He couldn’t imagine she’d want anything to do with him now that she knew the guy she’d been sleeping with was only the leftovers of the guy still trapped in his head. He couldn’t blame her if she hated him for it. Much as he wanted to be, Nick wasn’t really the _Nick_ she’d married, even if he _had_ been the guy she’d met in that house under the wisteria tree.

His chest suddenly ached and he thought he might just end up crying enough tears for both versions of himself by the time the day was said and done. 

The feather-soft caress of her hand over his own startled him, just as he was beginning to despair, and he looked up to see Nora had pulled her chair flush with his. Though the shine from tears was still fresh on her cheeks, he could see that look in her eyes as she watched him now, taking his hand fully in her own and holding it tightly, as if she were afraid he’d disappear if she didn’t. Even sad as those blue skies of hers were as they met his grey storms, he didn’t miss that look.

It looked a lot like love. 

“But you _are_ the same,” she said quietly. “I know it, even if...if not all of you remembers it yet.”

Nick understood that for once, she wasn’t speaking about him when she said it. She was referring to that other Nick now, the him in his head that was still made of synthetic skin and steel. 

“You sure, Doll?” he murmured, not caring if Amari was bearing witness. “This is a bit more than me missing some details on how we met. I could understand if you don’t want…”

“We met in that house under the wisteria tree,” she told him softly. “And again in the rain, under the stars.”

He sighed raggedly and closed his eyes in something like relief as her fingers brushed lovingly against his jaw.

“I _know_ who my husband is, Nick,” her voice was low and full of soothing smoke, drifting gently over still waters. “I remember _everything_ about him and I’ve got the complete picture in my head, even if he doesn’t right now. There’s no disconnect on my end.”

Nick wanted to pull her into his lap right then and hold her for the rest of his life. In that moment, sitting in that chair, he understood better than anyone how the Nick stuck in his head felt, and the kind of torment not having this woman close at hand would bring after spending a lifetime by her side.

His hand rose up to cover hers and he pulled it to his lips, pressing a long kiss into her palm. 

“Don’t ever stop surprising me, Sweetheart,” he breathed against her skin.

“We’ll fix this,” she assured him adamantly. “Together.”

She looked to Amari now. 

“There must be something we can do,” Nora pleaded.

“It’s certainly fascinating,” Amari breathed absently, deeply lost in thought. “I wonder…”

She stood sharply as the idea struck her, crossing the room to a filing cabinet and taking out a folder full to bursting with notes.

“Elena?” Nora called to her, after the silence dragged on long enough to cause more tension to rise.

“The disconnect you mentioned,” the Doctor said slowly, still reading through her old papers. “Did the other Nick know anything about it?”

“No, not until I told him,” Nick shook his head. “But...but I think he felt it. His ring was missing...he dropped it at some point back in HQ. Probably the last thing he registered before things went dark.”

He frowned as he thought now.

“It’s kind of funny..,” Nick reflected. “In his room, he was the one missing his ring. The Nora in his window had hers….but it was the exact opposite in mine.”

“It’s not unusual for the mind to utilize familiar imagery as a form of metaphor when a person isn’t conscious,” Amari noted. “Let’s assume for the moment the rings are a sign of the disconnection between your memories and his. Whatever this riddle is your mind has set before you, it could be a visual connection point that would create a bridge of sorts to both sets of memories. Some sort of metaphor your brain is looking for to unite the data.”

“More or less what we thought, too,” Nick nodded. “But why the disconnection, Doc? At first I thought _he_ was the cause of it somehow...but he’s no more aware of how to hand over his cards than I am with mine.”

“I have a theory on that,” Amari returned to them now, an agitated excitement in her tone as if her brain was in the midst of solving a particularly difficult puzzle. “I think the initial disconnect happened sometime between when you were with Doctor Birk, and when the Institute threw you out.”

She held a yellow steno pad on it in her hands, full of all the notes she’d been compiling on Nick’s case since HQ.

“After speaking with Doctor Li, we both feel that the Institute must have tried tampering with your secondary memory lock without knowing what it was,” she explained. “Much as I did back in the day. When we tried it, you lost a month of your life, but impressive as our technology is here, theirs would have been superior at the time.”

She flipped several pages in her notebook to a set of pen diagrams she’d drawn depicting Nick’s two bodies and the memory lock.

“Based on Doctor Li’s theories about the procedures the Institute would have tried, it’s possible they somehow damaged the broadcasting node in their attempts, while the manual transmission chip stayed in tact,” she pointed to Lola, which sat on her long desk in the back. “It would account for the synth version of you having flashes of memory from the remote host instead of full access. Your experiences in the Commonwealth were still being uploaded to your brain, but while your brain was still piloting the synth, only so much of your mind was being transmitted at any given time.”

She pointed to a drawing depicting two roads. One was wide and clear of debris, the other was narrow at one point and nearly blocked.

“I think the system Doctor Birk designed was trying to compensate for the damage the Institute caused. Your core self was forced through the transmission just fine, but the excess memories were filtered out to keep from overloading the signal,” She drew a line through the blocked road to demonstrate her point. 

“Is that why Nick’s experiencing a disconnect now, though?” Nora asked skeptically.

“Yes and no,” Doctor Amari shook her head. “I do think it’s the root of the problem though. The real disconnect happened when they cracked open your secondary memory lock at HQ. From what Doctor Li described, your body experienced some sort of surge before it shut down and interrupted the download.”

“But...Deacon and everyone,” Nora frowned. “They manually uploaded the information from Lola.”

“That is correct,” Amari nodded. “And we know all the memories are there. The problem lies in the original disconnect. When the Institute damaged your connection to your real body, they caused a divide that began to differentiate between your two lives, even though you were still the same man. If the transmission hadn’t been interrupted at HQ, I’m not even sure we’d be having this conversation. According to the data Doctor Li pulled when it happened, the broadcast wasn’t just transmitting data, it was trying to help your brain sort and assimilate it.”

She sighed heavily, rubbing at her eyes.

“I can’t say for certain, but Lola is designed to dump the information directly. She doesn’t seem to have the same file sorting integration protocols that the remote unit had,” Amari explained.

“Does this talk come with a translation for those of us in the room not so up on this kinda thing?” Nick asked wryly, as his head was starting to hurt.

“The disconnect caused by the Institute left your memories from the Commonwealth thinking they were still a separate individual,” she started again. “And when we transferred them into your brain, we didn’t tell them any differently, so they sectioned themselves off.”

Amari pointed at Nick now.

“Your brain, however, your human one, knows differently. It’s trying to assimilate the information, which is why you were getting bits of memory back as it bled through the cracks in the wall those memories erected,” Amari drew them a diagram of a circle with an “x” in the center and lines radiating out of it at random intervals. “My guess would be your mind tried to access information your memories from the Commonwealth didn’t want to give up and it strengthened the wall to the point of creating a memory block.”

“Nora,” Nick murmured. “I was trying to remember Nora and the...the other me thought I was taking her from him.”

He felt Nora rubbing circles into the back of his hand in comfort and he squeezed hers gently back.

“Guess I wasn’t joking about being a little possessive of you,” he offered her a sad smile.

“It’s reciprocated, believe me,” she gave him a much warmer one back.

“If we can figure out the riddle and build a bridge between your memories and your synthetic self’s memories,” Amari postulated. “The connection should be strong enough to break through that wall. My guess is that everything would come flooding back to you in that one moment.”

“Like breaking a dam in a river,” Nick said thinking it over.

“So what’s the riddle?” Nora asked. “Maybe we can help you solve it?”

Nick shook his head.

“Think this one’s between me and the poor guy stuck in my head, Doll,” he said softly. “Unless you know why I’m always dreaming about you in sunlight?”

“That’s..,” Nora’s expression ran from hope quickly into loss. “That’s it?”

“That’s it,” he said sadly. “Not much of a clue to go on, but between a couple of detectives, we should be able to work it out.”

“And until then, part of you is still stuck by himself in that room,” she lamented.

“It’s too bad I can’t just bottle you up and take you with me when I’m dreamin’,” Nick brushed a strand of her dark hair back behind her ear, following its path with thumb and forefinger until his skin ghosted against her collarbone. “Think it’d do us _both_ a world of good if he could just see you again. I’m sure it’d give him a little more hope. I know it would for me, if I were in his shoes.”

“Now that,” Amari interjected. “Is something I may be able to help you with.”

“What do ya mean, Doc?” Nick looked up at her, his brows furrowed in confusion.

“Could you really do that?” Nora breathed in understanding. “Nick and I, we could meet him together?”

“Not quite,” Amari shook her head. “With his memories sectioned off the way they are, it would be dangerous to try placing you in his mind and I would caution against trying to pull both versions of Nick across into your own, for fear of jumbling the data any further.” 

Amari took hold of Nora’s free hand.

“It should be safe to pull from the sectioned off memory into _your_ mind, however,” she informed her gently. “I could draw him into one of your dreams for a while, if you wish it.”

Nora’s elation at the mere suggestion of the idea was short lived.

“What about Nick?” she asked quietly, suddenly afraid and holding onto his hand for dear life. “Where will he be?”

“Asleep,” Amari reassured her. “If you choose to do this, Mister Valentine, I promise you, the procedure will do you no harm. The Memory pod will induce sleep before we make the connection, and you’ll wake up shortly after Nora does.”

Nick could feel his heart racing. He already knew what his answer would be.

“Will I..,” he licked his lips to wet them. “Will I dream?”

“No,” Amari shook her head. “ Not this time. For you, it will seem like no time at all has passed after you close your eyes, while for Nora, I can give her an entire day in a few hours.”

“Do it,” he nodded.

“Nick,” Nora sounded worried. “You don’t want to talk about this first?”

“Don’t know that there’s much left to discuss,” Nick smiled at her. “He...I need you, and if it takes a while to figure this whole riddle thing out, it’d be good for all of me to have the peace of mind that you’re still out here waiting.”

“But..,” Nora started.

Amari stood, setting her notes in her chair.

“I’ll give you two a moment,” Amari waved off any arguments. “It will allow me time to check on Mayor Hancock at the present anyway.”

She offered them a reassuring look before heading to the door.

“For what it’s worth,” she said, turning back to Nora. “I agree with your husband on this. Knowing you and Mister Valentine as I do, I think a visit with the part of him that’s been sectioned off may help with the healing process. If nothing else, it would allow him to begin work on the riddle, once you remind him why he’s trying to solve it.”

“Why the hesitation, Doll?” Nick asked as soon as the door was closed. “Would have thought with a chance like this, you’d be already in that glass egg and ready to go.”

“ _That_ right there’s part of the reason I’m not,” she shook her head. “You know, even at our happiest, even...even after we were married...there’s always been a small part of you that wouldn’t accept that I was yours. That I was happy and that you deserved to be happy, too.”

Her hand left his and worked it’s way up the front of his shirt, sliding over the worn cotton until it stopped in the middle of his chest and stayed there.

“I don’t ever want you to think that I’m not over the moon for you,” she murmured. “Not you, nor the part of you stuck in that room right now. I’m in love with Nick Valentine, no matter what he looks like. No matter how much he remembers.”

“Same guy,” he whispered playfully, reaching up to caress the column of her neck. 

“Then why does it feel like I’m the only one out of the three of us that really knows that,” she asked, the corners of her lips twitching up into a sad little curl. “Synth or human, you’ve always been the best man I’ve ever known. It’s not one or the other for me...I love _both_ and I don’t want you...either of you to doubt that when I’m with the other.”

“Think I’ve known that for a long while now,” Nick admitted, sliding his hand back up and into her hair. “Took me until today to understand it, though.”

He marveled at the silky feeling of her dark locks between his fingertips as he spoke. Everything about her was so goddamned soft and touchable; including her heart.

“I don’t have anything left to doubt with you, Nora,” he told her, his honesty bleeding through every word. “I know you’d walk through Hell for me, much as I’d do the same for you. I get that now, and I want the part of me still living in my head to get it, too.”

She closed the distance between them, leaning into him until her lips met his partway. It was a gentle kiss, as kisses went, but it was one full up with feeling. One full up with promises and trust. One full up with adoration. One that left him with no doubts that whatever he needed from her, she felt the same.

“Just so long as we’re clear on that,” she smiled, before running her tongue playfully over his lower lip.

“Like crystal,” Nick groaned and forced himself to pull back. “Much as I’d like to show you right now, don’t think Doc Amari’s gonna be gone that long.”

“Later, then,” she laughed, pressing her forehead to her shoulder as they both got their hearts back and under control.

“You said that was only part of it,” Nick said quietly, resting his head upon hers and taking delight in the familiar scent of her soap. “What’s the rest of it?”

“This isn’t the first time you and I have been hooked up together through the pods,” Nora explained. There was something in the way she said it. Something like regret. “Back when we first met up in the Commonwealth, there was this man. The same man who’d killed Nate and had taken Shaun.”

She bit her lip in hesitation before continuing.

“After you helped me track him down and we took him out, it turned out the guy had a chip in his head with the information we needed on it to find Shaun,” she frowned at the memory. “You...didn’t even hesitate. Just, offered yourself up to be a conduit so I could go poking around in that chip for the memory. There was a lot of risk involved to you and you wouldn’t let me talk you out of it.”

“I’d walk through fire if you needed me to,” he kissed the top of her head.

“There was a moment after, when we were done...you were sitting on the couch upstairs and you spoke to me in that other man’s voice,” she shook her head. “It was just a mnemonic impression and Amari gave you a once over again just to be sure, but...it really messed with you afterwards. Messed with your head and made you feel a little less _human_ for a while. I appreciated what you did to help me that day, but I swore I’d never let you put yourself at risk like that again.”

“You heard Amari, though,” he murmured soothingly. “There’s no risk to me this time. I’ll close my eyes and then I’ll wake up.”

“I know,” she admitted weakly. “It’s just the memory of the thing. The idea that something _could_ happen to you...it scares the shit out of me.”

“Might know that feeling,” he chuckled softly. “Par for the course when you’re hitched to the Lady of the Commonwealth.”

“I’m probably being silly,” she said sheepishly.

“I didn’t say that,” Nick reassured her. “We’ve got a lot to lose loving each other, but...we have a helluva lot more to gain, too. I’ll take that gamble for even one more day in this world with you. Think the guy in my head might feel the same.”

“So, you’re really ok with this?” she asked, looking up at him thoughtfully.

“More than ok,” he nodded. “You’re still _his_ as much as you're also _mine_. Can’t think of a better way for him to come to terms with it than trying this right now, at least, until we figure out how to get the band back together.”

Nick smiled at her. The kind of charming smile he only wore when he was really happy.

“To be honest, it’s a bit selfish of me, too,” his smile fell into a lopsided grin as he spoke. “We had a lot of good times together before I ended up back in my original packaging. Spent a lot of days, just you and me, when I was still wearing that synth suit, dreaming about being human. It’d be nice if you could look back on those times as fondly as I know I will someday.”

His fingers had found her left hand at some point and he rubbed gently at the space where her ring had once been. 

“I don’t..,” he murmured. “I don’t want your last memory of me like that to be of a body on the table at HQ.”

Nora’s heart gave a little ache at his words. She didn’t want to remember him in his other life like that either. When she spent her days looking into his grey eyes, she wanted to be able to look back and fondly remember that they’d once glowed bright yellow.

Nick was right. Seeing him again like he used to be; whole and alive and not bleeding out waves of black coolant from where the rifle had torn him open...she needed to see him again. Like he was, before that morning they’d encountered X6-88 on that street and their lives had changed forever.

“I love you, you know that?” she beamed up at him.

“I do, Nora,” he admitted, pressing his mouth to hers again. “I really do.”

A knock at the door stopped them from going further than that one kiss, as Amari stuck her head in.

“Have you come to a decision?” she inquired.

“Hook us up, Doc,” Nick grinned over his shoulder at her. “My wife and I have a date.”

“At seven,” Nora laughed wistfully. “It has to be at seven.”

Nick glanced back at Nora, thinking of the broken clocks in that room where the other Nick Valentine was imprisoned.

“Sounds like our time of day,” he noted jovially. “By the way, last night when I saw Nick...he wanted you to know his clock was running a bit slow.”

“Thank goodness mine’s always on time,” she kissed his cheek and stood as Amari directed them to the pods.

“If we set your internal clock to the morning,” Amari explained to her. “I can give you until midnight while you dream. That’s three hours of real time...anything longer than that, I wouldn’t recommend. The Memory Den can get...addicting if utilized for too long for pleasure.”

“Not much pleasure with a chaperone hanging around,” Nick said wryly, nodding to the small computer screen Amari had hooked to one of the pods.

“I can understand how this encounter may be intimately personal to the two of you,” Amari smirked. “I’ll start the program from here and then monitor your vitals and brain function from the console just up the stairs. Some things are meant to stay private, and I am in full understanding of that.”

“Thank you, Elena,” Nora said warmly, her face brightening.

“I was young once, too,” the good Doctor winked at her. She gestured towards the pod on the right side of the room. “Nick, if you’ll take a seat over here, we can begin by inducing sleep and drawing your other self from his current prison.”

Nick shucked off his trench coat and handed it to Nora.

“Just in case,” he grinned. “So you don’t start turning blue.”

“Ha ha. Get in the pod,” Nora slid it onto her shoulders, her slender frame swimming in the tan material.

“It’s a good look for you, Doll,” he winked at her once he was situated. “Might be worth trying on again _later_ , if you know what I mean.”

“The whole world knows what you mean when you look at me like that, Mister Valentine,” Nora laughed. “Sleep well.”

“I’ll try,” he nodded. “Dream a good dream for me.”

“I’ll dream a good dream _of_ you,” she beamed, devotion written in her eyes.

Nora held his gaze until the glass dome slowly lowered and encased the pod. His grey eyes fell away from hers as he succumbed to sleep. Forcing her breaths to stay calm, she watched him doze and listened to the steady beeps of his vital signs sounding from Amari’s console.

“I’ll take good care of him,” Amari promised. “I’ll take good care of you both.”

“I know,” Nora said warmly, climbing into her own pod. “Hey...do I have to meet him in that apartment of his? The one off Monroe and Third?”

“Not at all,” Amari shook her head. “Nick returns there in his dreams because he associates it with happiness, but this is your dream, Nora. It can happen wherever you like. Did you have a destination in mind?” 

“I think I do,” she responded quietly. “The place where I dream.”

“Just hold onto that thought then,” Amari’s voice was growing more distant by the moment as Nora’s pod closed around her and the screen before her flickered on. “And you’ll be there.”

With a deep breath, she closed her eyes and focused on her destination. In the back of her mind, Nora heard the faintest trickle of the piano and bass calling to her from the old record player. She could imagine the overwhelming aroma of coffee and roses, mixing with the warm morning breeze of the summer. She remembered what it felt like to stand above the city in the sunlight and spend her day just watching the world go by. The corners of her lips curved upward as she found herself there now, just as Amari had said.

The clock chimed from the room behind her and she heard the hushed rustling of cloth as someone struggled to sit up on the couch. It was the sound of someone waking up.

Deep in the basement of the Memory Den, Nora dreamed.

She dreamed of a lifetime.

A lifetime contained in a single day.


	32. The Girl He Waited For

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah! I am so sorry, this chapter took all day.
> 
> I made you guys a playlist to go along with it though to make up for it. It includes a few more tracks than what occurs. https://8tracks.com/anafterlifeinroses/hey-valentine
> 
> Hope you guys like this one! As always, comments are very much appreciated!
> 
> Also, let me link amz's other soundtrack here as well. I was listening to it during the last chapter and borrowed two of it's songs for this one. Love it!:  
> https://8tracks.com/rosewaterhag/love-honor-and-cherish

The scent of roses filled the air, mixing with the warm aroma of freshly brewed coffee.

Nick inhaled deeply of the familiar fragrance, his fans whirring softly as he stirred. There was something comforting about that balmy elixir floating around him as he lay there. It’d been so damned long since he’d experienced this sort of absolute solace, he was hesitant to open his eyes in fear his drives were playing tricks on him. He could weather an eternity alone, if he only could just stay wrapped in the tranquility of the moment.

It was the closest thing he could ever remember feeling to the contentment he’d known sleeping next to his wife.

For a moment, the solitary sound around him was the whisper of a breeze blowing through distant treetops and the soft waves of indiscernible noises and voices that filtered in from a city somewhere below. The longer he lay there though, Nick realized he could hear some sort of record player or radio, when the gentle trill of a guitar skipped by his ears. A piano joined it in a steady rhythm, as a smooth and melodious voice began to sing. 

Nick’s eyes opened slowly as realization washed over him. He knew the words to this song. She’d sang them softly to him as it’d played on the old portable turntable they kept on Home Plate’s roof. It was the first time he’d ever danced with her; under the starlight, in their garden of roses. She’d always teased that Jackie Wilson number was Nick’s, for he played it often in their house, but this?. This was Nora’s song. 

Sense came back to him while The Robins crooned _Since I First Met You_ from somewhere to his right. Nick realized he was lying on his back; a warm wood ceiling fan lazily spinning where it hung from the ceiling above him.

His first thought upon fully waking was that he couldn’t recall starting his sleep protocols. His second thought was that he wasn’t lying on that old leather couch in the desolate room with the bay window and that he’d never seen that ceiling fan in all his life. Nor the white ceilings with the wood planking that greeted him with the fan, now that he was thinking about it.

Nick could feel the uptake in his coolant pumps as the beginnings of nervous excitement and curiosity flooded his systems. He’d been in the ruins of that old apartment near the riverfront for so long now without end, to be anywhere new was a small blessing; the isolation and loneliness of that damned room had been suffocating. As he turned his head to his left, however, and his vision filled with welcoming golden yellow walls trimmed in white and a warm-brown coffee table, Nick realized he was someplace he’d never been before.

Across the room, a tall grandfather clock in the same warm-wood brown began to chime its morning tune, singing to seven before it fell silent. Nick recognized it was the first time in over two months he’d finally known the hour. Something about that made him want to cry, though he couldn’t.

They would have been joyful tears if he’d been able to, however.

His inquisitiveness finally got the better of him and he struggled to sit up on the plush mid-century couch he’d been sleeping upon. The slightly burnt-orange tone of the linen felt like new under the sensor net of his good hand, and it bore none of the tears or broken features that were a customary part of any Commonwealth find. 

On the coffee table in front of him, two large encyclopedias lay out; one was pristine and titled _Before_ , while the other looked like it’d come from a second-hand shop, the cloth cover of it’s hardback scuffed and ragged. Nick was fairly certain the binding was loose on the edition marked _After_ , but even so, of the two, it looked like something it’s owner paged through often.

Lowering his feet to the hard wooden floors, he was slightly abashed for sleeping on such well kept furniture with his old leather shoes still on. Retrieving his faded hat from it’s place near the end of the table, he set it on his head and slid back into his tattered trench coat; not bothering to tie the belt. It had been waiting for him across the back of the couch. Like he’d just come home from work and had a quick lie down before dinner. Like he did this everyday.

Like he lived there.

Not that he was in a hurry to leave the serenity of this room any time in the near future, but he put his threadbare armor back on around himself, just in case.

Now that he was on his feet, he had a chance to properly survey his surroundings. He stood in a long sort of living room; longer than the apartment he’d been trapped in by at least another room; though it was set up much the same. As Nick came to the end of the couch, he found himself facing a smart looking open kitchen, decked out in the bright wood and colorful appliances that matched the warm tones of the walls with a black and white checkered tile floor. Carnival glass canisters and cups, bowls and pitchers were visible throughout. A pair of coffee mugs sat out on the marble counter, beside a chrome Luxobrew maker and a little red breakfast table, trimmed in silver, stood beside a tall window; complete with a box full of pink roses. On the table, a blue carnival glass vase sat, holding a bouquet of hubflowers and wildgrowths in the morning sun.

To Nick’s right, a pair of tall wooden bookshelves lined the wall, filled to the brim with a myriad of hardcover editions; oddly color coded. Stepping away from the safety of the couch, the detective slipped quietly over to the shelves for a better look. 

Each set of colored volumes were unique and each was clearly identified by the embossed titles on their edges. A dictionary-sized volume in a faded red crocodile leather said _John Hancock_ in a spidery black script along its binding. Beside it, four blue kid-leather pocket journals were stacked. Three of them read _Deacon_ along their edges, but the fourth had another name; all in a silvery typewriter print.

There seemed to be a book or more for each of Nora’s companions, all unique to the individual: _Piper_ was a scrapbook collection of pasted news articles, _MacCready_ was a green and gold set of softcovers, _Preston_ a smart-looking tan notebook and _Cait_ a rough-shode looking hardcover. Harry’s book was tall and fat, Ellie’s pink with a pair of white stripes at the top of the binding and Strong’s was the largest; a smooth leather volume colored a milky sort of white. It seemed like every friend she’d ever had in the Commonwealth was sitting on her shelves; and on the highest shelf of all, were _Nick’s_.

There were seven, bright yellow linen hardbacks lined up with his name printed on the edges, in the same font as his office sign. One of them contained some sort of bookmark with a ribbon, the end of which hung over the binding of the volume it rested in; a little silver heart with an arrow dangling from it’s tail. Each of the seven volumes was novel length; more than one evening’s read, at the very least. They nearly took up the whole shelf by themselves.

Nearly.

An eighth volume sat leaning beside the others; grey and thin by comparison, but no less tall. His name was written in bright yellow letters on that volume, a reversal of the other seven.

He wondered what was written in them.

The soft thrum of muffled trumpets accompanied by a smooth drum and cymbal set drew Nick’s attention away from the hardbacks. Beside the bookshelves sat a long record player; the music changing and Jackie Wilson’s full voice singing. _For Once in My Life_ , filled the room. A single, breathy laugh escaped him. 

He’d caught Nora singing along to that record in the shower once. She’d come into the office from a week long trip helping the Minutemen. When she hadn’t found Nick at his desk, she’d stepped into the little shower room there to clean up; belting along with the office player as her steam poured out the bathroom door. She’d never realized Nick had just been up the stairs making coffee in expectation of her arrival. Never known how he’d stood there, listening to the smoke in her voice, intoxicated by the everyday routine of it all. A husband making coffee while his wife sang in the shower. It was the little things that always filled him with a funny kind of happiness. It was the little things he’d never dreamed he would experience.

Nick ran his fingers lovingly over the old player now, taking note of its many inhabitants. Photographs in gilded frames covered that floor radio. Much like the books, Nora’s friends were all present here as well. The Mayor of Goodneighbor grinned out at him from one frame, his arm around Nora’s neck and a mirroring smirk crossing her cheeks. Piper was blowing playful kisses in a small wooden frame beside Preston’s; the Minuteman decked out in full regalia and standing before his blue and white flag. 

A gold frame with many windows showed a pair of men so similar, Nick would have almost sworn they were twins. One was dressed in a sharp three piece suit with a press badge stuck into the brim of his hat, the other in a worn T-shirt and sunglasses. Both were pictured with Nora; the man in the suit swinging her around in the old city gardens, while the man in the T-shirt carried her piggyback. In the center of the frame, both men stood together, smiling; black hair and blue eyes a near perfect match. Without his sunglasses, Nick would almost have said the man in the t-shirt had ginger colored eyebrows; a sharp contrast to the dark pompadour he was sporting.

Letting his eyes drift over the frames, Nick found pictures of Kent in the Silver Shroud coat and hat, and of Daisy, candidly reading in a beautiful library. He saw MacCready hamming it up for the camera with his son, and Cait holding a titled belt of some sort in a boxing ring; one of Codsworth and Curie walking the bridge to Sanctuary, and of Strong flexing proudly for the photographer.

The wall above the record player was as full of photographs as the tabletop had been: A gallery of silver frames hung in a variety of shapes and sizes; all of Nick. He saw pictures of his human counterpart, sitting on the steps of the Old North Church with a cigarette in hand and again on their rooftop garden back in Diamond City. He saw pictures of himself in his office and outside under the overhang of the Red Rocket station near Sanctuary Hills.

In the center of them all was a wedding photo; a proper one like they took back in the old days. He stood, just as he did now in his trench coat and hat, beside Nora. For the first time in his life, Nick thought that the camera might have loved him. If asked, he’d never be able to point out the difference; he had photos of himself smiling and photos of himself with Nora, taken by Ellie and Piper and even one by Nat; but this one _was_ different somehow.

If it’d been any other man in that frame, Nick might have thought him rather handsome.

The sight of their silver rings standing proudly on their entwined fingers sent a spark of regret through the wires in his chest. His metal claw rubbed at his bare good hand and he mourned the loss of that tiny metal circle. It was a silly thing to get so worked up about in the scheme of things. Just an old tradition the Commonwealth had done away with in favor of more important things; like survival.

Even so…

There was something about that band of silver he’d been attached to ever since the night Nora had snuck it onto his finger. He’d come out of his sleep cycle to find the bit of jewelry waiting there on his good hand; like it belonged. He’d loved it every day after; twisting it as he ran scenarios on a new case, enjoying the soft tap it made when he’d catch it against the edge of his desk, admiring how it matched Nora’s every time their hands met.

Waking up without it in that other room after his systems had overloaded and the world had gone dark had been heartbreaking. He’d spent the first week searching every nook and cranny of the place in hopes of finding it. He’d laid on the couch for nearly week afterwards, when he hadn’t been able to.

It was a silly thing to miss when he had so much more he’d lost since that morning in the street with X6, and yet…

...and yet, wearing that little silver ring made him feel more human and accepted than he’d ever admit. It was a mark on him, _Nora’s_ mark on him, and he’d worn it proudly. Knowing she had his mark on her and that, when they were together, the rings announced them to be a matched pairing had always brought him a small, but secret pleasure. The whole of Diamond City knew they were linked in silver; that she’d chosen to be his and that he was her man, despite the visible steel of his jaw through the tatters of his synthetic skin.

It was the little things that always brought him the most happiness.

He wondered what Nora would think of him now, knowing he’d dropped it somewhere. That he’d lost the one gift she’d given him he’d never taken off. The loss of her mark was the last sensation he could remember before his world ran to black. The feeling of his body arching off that table in pain as his system forced a shutdown. The feeling of his arm going stiff in one sharp moment; throwing that little piece of silver away from his finger. He fervently hoped it was somewhere in the Railroad’s HQ and that they might find it one day when they went back. He had no idea where else it could be.

He’d never even heard it hit the ground. 

Nick stared for a long while at that picture in the silver frame; allowing his eyes the luxury of sliding over Nora’s every feature again and again. He was desperate to memorize them and wished he could take the picture with him when he’d have to leave again. 

The detective wasn’t even sure _why_ he thought he might have to leave this wonderful place, but the feeling was there all the same. The loss Nick knew he’d be drowning under once that happened left him with a frantic desire to find something to take back to that lonely room with him. Just one more memory to sustain him; when he was cast back to his isolation again.

Glancing around, Nick wasn’t sure where he was or how he’d arrived there, but the room was so full of warmth and light, it bolstered his mind and body in a way he hadn’t known in the two long months of forced solitude he’d grown accustomed to. If they couldn’t solve the riddle, he and his other self, if he was _damned_ to live out his days in the walls of another man’s head; he wanted it to be here; in this place, where every corner held a reminder that he hadn’t been just a shadow on the wall. 

The Great Synth Detective had lived in the Commonwealth once upon a time and he’d had a life he’d made his own.

A warm summer breeze filtered through the gauzy white curtains, floating around the room from an open balcony door, just as the record player shifted again and Bing Crosby crooned _La Vie en Rose_ from it’s speakers. It was an appropriate song for this place; a warm and inviting set of rooms, filled with the scent of her roses.

The breeze washed a peaceful calm over Nick and he decided he might as well check out the balcony of his new accommodations next; when he saw her.

Nick froze.

 _She_ watched him from behind the gauze of the curtain, peeking shyly around the white wood trim. Her blue eyes were bright and wide as the sky above and her shoulders rose and fell in that cream-colored dress flecked with flowers she’d married him in, as she fought to calm her breaths. Her dark hair was pinned back, as it had been that first night when he’d mistaken her date for something else, and she ended up bringing the drinks they’d promised to meet up at Home Plate for to the office instead. 

Dear god, she was _beautiful_. There was no other word in the world for her, save that.

Nick swallowed hard and found the joints in his legs rusted stiff. It was the only reason he could think of why they wouldn’t carry him forward now. He didn’t care if she was some kind of a mirage, or a dream, or even a glitch in his system. It was the first time he’d seen her awake since he’d fallen asleep.

For a full breath, they could only stare at one another; transfixed. 

And then she shifted; sliding out of the sunlight of the balcony and into the room. It was a small, but graceful step.

Nick didn’t move. He couldn’t.

He was too afraid that if he did, she’d disappear from his sight again.

While Nick would never know it, Nora had seen that exact same look he was giving her now on another man who looked just like him. A man who’d looked at her in the same kind of panic as if she could break his heart with a thought. A man she’d met nearly two months back, in the common room of the Railroad HQ, on the day she’d woken up from her injuries. A man she’d known in another body for a short lifetime of years before that. 

Both versions of Nick were so much alike in their cores; not just similar, but the same. She hoped one day they’d get the chance to know that for themselves when they were whole and of one body again. But right now, this Nick, _her_ Nick, didn’t need to be anything more than he was. He was alive and beautiful and looking at her with those yellow eyes she’d never dreamed of seeing lit up again. 

_This_ was what she’d spent _her_ weeks dreaming of when she’d been sleeping in that bed back in HQ; of Nick as he was when she met him in the Commonwealth, in an apartment that no longer existed, but had once been hers and hers alone. An apartment not too far downtown from his old one with the bay window. An apartment she’d always dreamed of sharing with her husband someday; with it’s balcony rose garden and warm sunny walls.

Nick inhaled, willing himself to say something, anything; but no words would form on his tongue.

Nora licked her lips nervously before the gentle hint of a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. She’d take the lead.

Nick watched as she edged forward another step.

“Hey, Valentine,” her voice slid over his name; always like smoke over water. His other self, the other Nick, had said she’d mistaken his name for a love song and Nick couldn’t help but think it was true. She’d been calling his name like that before he even understood what she’d meant by it: It was the way she said ‘I love you’. Spoke volumes more than those three words ever could. She put everything of her heart into his name. “...long time no see, partner.”

The air rushed out of Nick’s chest in a jagged rush of disbelief.

“You...you _can’t_ be here,” he finally choked out, the glow of his yellow eyes stuck in her blue. “It’s...it’s not possible. After all this _time_...am I...am I dreaming?”

“No,” she shook her head, limbs twitching with need to touch. “But I am. Heard your clock might be running a little slow again and Doctor Amari, she...she figured out a way we might fix that.”

The words he’d said to the other Nick, to his other self; the one out there and living with Nora. She’d gotten his message and she...she…

“You’re at the Memory Den,” he breathed as realization flooded through him. She’d found a way through, just like that first night in Vault 114, when she’d pulled him out of Skinny Malone’s grasp and stood with him under the starlight as it rained. She’d _found_ him, and it wasn’t a _dream_ , not _his_ anyway. His sweet and clever girl was _really_ there, standing in front of him in all her glory. 

“You did say to meet you at seven,” she said wistfully, her smile starting to break. “I know I’m two months and twelve hours late, but...this way we have until Midnight.”

“What happens at Midnight?” he murmured, captivated by the angel standing before him.

“I turn back into a pumpkin,” she said ruefully, her voice hitching on the words. “And spend tomorrow hoping my detective can find his way back to me.”

“Thought you’d be waiting on some kind of Prince, Cinderella,” he gave a strangled chuckle.

“Not me,” she breathed. “I found the guy I was looking for.”

“He’s, ah...he’s looking pretty good these days,” Nick tried to clear his throat. Simulated or not, his tongue was thick in his mouth and awkward. “From what I could see.”

“He is,” she agreed. “He’s just like I remember him.”

The fans in Nick’s chest stuttered.

“H-how’s that?” he forced a smile.

“With bright yellow eyes and an old tattered trench coat,” she beamed. “And a handful of cards he’s still playing too close to his chest.”

He swallowed down the lump in his throat.

“Sure you don’t already have the full deck?” he asked anxiously.

“Not without you,” she said adamantly. “Never without you.”

Nick felt something break in his chest then. Something heavy and knotted that he’d been carrying for far too long in his solitude.

“What are we gonna do about this?” he breathed, begging her without words to save him.

She took another step forward. 

“How bout we start with..,” her voice cracked and he could see the glass in her eyes as she tried to keep it together. “How bout we start with how much I’ve missed you and go from there?” 

“I can work with that,” his smooth tone snagged, as his knees finally obeyed his pleas and began to move.

“I missed you,” she cried, hastened in her last three steps to meet him.

“Oh god—me, too,” he choked out, wrapping his arms around her.

The storm around them broke the moment his skin touched hers, leaving an agitated gale in its wake. Slender, pale fingers fisted around his tie and slid up behind his neck. His good hand tangled in the dark strands of her hair while his metal claw snaked around her waist. She tugged on the length of dark silk and he pulled her tightly up and into his chest.

They met as gravity forced them together.

And the gale became a hurricane.

He groaned and slid his tongue between her lips, delighting in the whining little gasp she made as he swallowed down her air. They clashed over and over again at a fevered pitch; hands raking over clothes and skin and bodies as they searched for purchase in their irritation to close the distance between them, even as none remained.

Nick dragged splayed fingers, taut and bruising down her sides, cupping her hips and hauling her flush against his own, as his mouth assaulted hers in want of another taste. She was coffee and smokes and the sweet tang of bourbon, cut with homemade rosewater; and he forced his tongue against her own, if only to drink more of her in.

“A month was too long,” he gasped between kisses, keeping her close and sobbing his words in breathless heaves against her lips. “Two months was a _lifetime_.”

“I’m so sorry, Nick,” she wept, the salt mixing with the gun oil and tobacco on his tongue. “I never wanted you to be alone...didn’t mean to make you wait so long...I tried to save you...I tried…”

“I know,” he moaned and lifted her against his growing erection, rolling their hips together until both of them were shaking from the effort. “And you _did_. You’re saving me right now...I just...just wanted to see you one last time, Doll...after that morning in the street…”

He broke away roughly, burying his lips against the silk-soft skin of her throat, licking and sucking and nipping at her; forcing her harder against the strained material of his trousers.

“I couldn’t see or hear you when I was stuck in that damn room,” he growled, desperate for more of her even as she writhed in his arms. “But I could _feel_ you...every time you touched him, I could feel _you_.”

He bit the curve of her neck and inhaled, determined to leave a mark.

“Do you know how maddening it’s been...feeling the whisper of your touch and not being able to return it...to have your _mouth_ ghosting over my skin and to not see you there..,” he growled; voice deep and roused with lust. “I’ve been _desperate_ to have you in my arms again...to know that you’re still _mine_ …my _girl_...my _wife_ …”

“Oh god, Nick—A-always!” Nora cried out, struggling to keep upright in his frantic embrace.

“I need you so badly, Nora,” he choked the words even as they broke into a sob for want of her. “I can’t take this _longing_ anymore for the phantom haunting my bed. It’s been so long...so long without you…without _being_ in you…”

“Take me to the bedroom, Nick” she pulled at him now, slipping the buttons of his shirt free in a dizzying rush. “Second door.”

“Dunno if I’ll make it that far,” he groaned painfully, as his hands slid up the satin of her thighs to find nothing in his way beneath her dress. “What about the couch?”

“Later,” she rumbled, pressing her mouth to that sweet spot on the underside of his jaw, just above the tear in his synthetic skin. Nick’s whole body tremored against her, his cooling fans faltering and crying out as they struggled to stay spinning. “Bed’s bigger.”

“Couch for later,” he agreed, hoisting her up off her feet, unceremoniously, and striding quickly to the bedroom door while she loosened his tie and continued to pull at his clothing.

With great effort, they made it into the bedroom, the cacophony of their labored breaths and pleasure-drunk sighs drowning out the record player behind them. 

Nora’s bedroom was as beautiful as the rest of the apartment, the sunny yellow sheets made brighter in the light shining on it from the window. It was the kind of room he could imagine a husband making love to his wife in; reconnecting every morning as the sun rose. It was the kind of room he’d spend the rest of his days dreaming about sleeping beside her in. Four quick strides and Nick had made it to the bed; dumping her into the middle of it, before toeing off his shoes and climbing in with her. 

In his rush to relieve himself of his trench coat, he’d almost knocked off his hat and seeing her lying so perfect and beautiful there-- even as she reached for him and his mind was adrift with impassioned need--he stiffened.

“I..,” he swallowed hard; an icy wash of fear pouring through his sensors. “I’m not like…”

“You’re _perfect_ ,” she breathed out in adoration, as her fingers slid up beneath the threadbare cotton of his undershirt. The synthetic panels of his torso were _all_ there; not a trace of the rifle wounds that had nearly torn him in two. “Oh god, _Nick_ , you’re so _perfect_ …”

He could feel the sharp pain of his coolant pumping harshly through his chest, and searched her face for any hint of the lie he was vehement he’d find. Desperate as he was for her, he was painfully _aware_ of how he must look in comparison to that other body, to that other Nick. Try as he might, however, there was nothing in the look she was giving him now that suggested anything save for barely contained desire as she raked her eyes and hands over him. She wore a look that said she _wanted_ him. She wore a look that said she was ready to tear his shirt off if he didn’t start moving again.

She wore a look that said she _loved_ him; _all_ of him, just as he _was_.

“Take it off,” she pleaded, sitting up to tug impatiently at his undershirt. “I want to see you...all of you…”

“Nora..,” he breathed, as she managed to slide the button-down from his shoulders.

“I swear to God, I will strip you myself if I have to, Nick Valentine,” she groaned, plucking the hat from his head and setting it on her own. She tugged on the remains of the tie and brushed her mouth firmly against his own; her tongue sweeping against his possessively until he was moaning against her again. “I want you naked and fucking me like a husband that hasn’t seen his wife in two months.”

Nick caught hold of her wrists and pulled her away from him, before roughly pressing his lips back to hers while he bound her hands in his own. There was a predatory fire and avaricious as he kissed her now; a desire for control masking the amorous elation her response had ignited. She was _his_ , she’d _always_ been his, and he’d fucking make her his again, right now, if only to _remind_ himself of that fact.

“Get that goddamned dress off, Nora,” he growled against her mouth, nipping at her one more time and then releasing her. “Before I _tear_ it off.”

She had the nerve to smile at him, that impish smile she always gave him once she’d riled him up to delirium in his need for her. She reached first for the fedora.

“Leave it,” he demanded, voice low and dripping with salacity.

The impish smile turned to a wicked grin, and she sat up on her knees before him; pulling at the ties that kept her dress in place; unwrapping herself for him in slow and patient movements that flared his sensors in anticipation of touching her again. Nick threw his his button-down near the foot of the bed and eased out of the undershirt in one smooth motion; never breaking his gaze with her. He could feel his coolant running hot through the tubing in his chest, as his fans struggled to keep it from overheating.

He knelt before her, bare from the waist up, feeling equally aroused and exposed in the same itching spark that raced over his synthetic skin with the air of the room. His chest was just as tattered and scored as the rest of his skin and while she’d seen it before, he doubted his other self was as unnatural and imperfect when lying beside her as Nick felt now. Her appreciative gaze confused him as much as it drove him to the brink.

Her dress fell away, leaving her mirrored on her knees before him; wearing nothing but that damned devil’s grin, a little leather bow from a necklace that had gotten turned around at her throat, Nick’s faded fedora...and a plethora of new scars.

“Kind of a mess, I know,” she whispered as his eyes dragged over her body, sticking to the large burn from an Institute rifle above her left hip. “That one’s...new.”

“Jesus,” Nick exhaled sharply, reaching out with his good hand to trace the divots of scar tissue there. The sudden urge to put another bullet in X6-88’s body fired up in his processors. “He could have _killed_ you.”

“But he didn’t,” she shook her head. “Because of you. You saved me, Nick. That big ugly scar will be proof of that forever.”

“There’s nothing ugly about you,” he breathed, his voice sounding angry when in reality it was anguish coloring his words now. “You’re _perfect_ , Nora. Just as you are.”

“I could say the same,” she leaned back, inviting him to follow.

“I don’t understand it. How could you still _want_ this,” he shook his head in agonized denial, even as he moved to follow her. “How could you still want _me_?”

“I’ll _always_ want you, Nick,” she murmured, sliding her legs to either side of his hips. “Human or synth, I’m over the moon for the man _beneath_ it all. And I want him. Always, no matter how he comes packaged.”

She pointed playfully at the little black heart tattoo and the more recent addition of the arrow struck through it at her hip.

“I even have a tag that says so,” she purred. “Property of Nick Valentine.”

Nick traced the little heart she kept hidden beneath her clothing. He’d grown so fond of since they’d married; worried he’d wear the ink away as often as he’d run his fingers over it. Much as he loved the little arrow struck through it’s center now, and the meaning he knew lay behind it, he cringed.

“Wish I still had something of the same,” he admitted sadly, holding up his good hand in shame for the lack of metal it carried. “I seem to have lost mine.”

“That’s because I have it,” Nora said softly. 

Reaching up, she untied the little bow at her neck and pulled the leather strap forward. A glint of silver flashed in the morning sunlight streaming in through the window, and suddenly, there in her palm, lay Nick’s ring.

“Where..,” he gasped, transfixed as she held it up.

“Deacon found it,” she explained. “I’ve been holding onto it.”

“But..,” he shook his head in quiet bewilderment. “Why? You didn’t give it to…”

His words cut short as she held her own naked hand before him.

“You weren’t the only one going without,” she smiled sadly. “Mine fell off, too…just not somewhere we could find it. We’re still the same, you and me.”

“Nora..,” he sighed her name, stroking his metal claw along the side of her cheek.

“You can find me another one someday,” she reassured him, kissing the steel of his hand affectionately. “And in the meantime, you know I’ve got your heart written on my skin in place of it.”

With gentle hands she caught hold of his good one.

“I’ve been waiting to return this to you,” she murmured, kissing the silver ring. Nick watched with devout attention as she slid the band of metal back into place on his finger. “I’ll give you the real ring when you get back. Until then...hold onto this one for me...I’ve got it’s match around my neck back home.”

His sensor net sparked and fizzled as she pulled his palm to her lips and pressed them lovingly to his pearlescent skin. Nick’s fingers flexed at the soft contact, the glow of his eyes catching on the band he’d been so despondent over losing. Seeing it there again, seeing Nora bare, save for his hat, and waiting beneath him; he felt so painfully _human_ , he’d have sworn it was a heart and not coolant pumping in his chest now. 

It thrilled him to know she was wearing it’s match against her skin somewhere out in the real world, as he looked at that mark of silver. . 

“When I get back to you there,” he said in low tones raw with adulation. “When I get back to you there, I’ll make up for every day you’ve had to carry it.”

“Wouldn’t mind a preview,” she suggested, reaching between them and running her palm down the front of his trousers. “If you’re still up for it.”

The heat was immediately back in his wiring as she stroked him. The weight of the silver ring back on his finger, setting his passion ablaze.

“Darling,” he warned, eyes flickering as she caressed him firmly again. “Keep that up and you’ll be playing with fire, here.”

“Maybe I like it hot,” she cooed, shocking him as she gripped him with purpose and ran down his length again. “What ever are you going to do about it, Mister Valentine?”

“I’m gonna show you, one sweet inch at a time, just how much I’ve missed you,” he growled, popping the button of his trousers and shoving them down until he was free. “Now spread those goddamned perfect legs, Doll, and be loud for me.”

He watched with with rapt interest, his steel hand rising to her knee as she opened to him; the look in his eyes a devouring one. Her arms slid up over his shoulders in delight as he climbed the length of her body; the panels of his synthetic skin becoming hot to the touch as they met her skin.

“Ah, you’re so warm,” she hissed, enjoying the heat in that velvety texture where it brushed against her.

“Thought you were into that,” he licked a path up her neck, gently rubbing his chest to hers as he did so.

“More than you know,” she bit back a gasp. Nick bit her with gentle teeth in response. 

“Don’t hold it in. I want to hear you, Nora,” he growled into her ear. Cupping her breast roughly in his good palm, he handed her with expert care while he teased her. She’d made the mistake of telling him how much she loved his voice once, and he used it to his advantage when she lay beneath him, ever since. “I want to hear how fucking good you’re feelin’ when I’m buried to the hilt inside you. I need to.”

She nodded dumbly, lost to the electricity rushing through her veins every time he shifted his palm against her. His brazen hand worked her flesh with confidence, groping her skin with reverent anticipation that had Nora writhing in desperation for more. This version of Nick knew every fantasy and desire she’d ever held, and he reveled in getting the reactions he wanted from her. As his thumb ran roughshod over her nipple again, his erection stroked against her slick sex, making her shiver. She did get loud then, just as he’d wanted.

“Already sopping and eager for me,” he chuckled, even as the sound was strained in pleasure. She whined beneath his every touch and Nick took wicked enjoyment in vexing her. “Like that first time, in my chair at the office, soaking through my damned trousers. Thought I’d lost my mind when you sank down onto me.”

He stroked his length through her sodden folds again, coating himself in her wetness and grimacing against the bliss radiating through his sensor net. Even after all this time, it was hard not to let himself tip over that edge when her warmth was upon him. Harder still when she started calling to him in that sweet smoke of hers; like the sum of her world could be contained in the four letters of his name.

“Never met a dame that got me so riled up just by calling to me,” he teased her entrance with his tip, enraptured as she cried out to him. “I’m always as ready for you, as you are for me, Nora. You used to get me so worked up in my trousers I had to start buttoning the trench coat to keep my dignity.”

“You’re a horrible tease,” she accused him with a laugh that bled into a deep moan as his erection slid up again, bumping her clit.

“This from the woman who used to strut around my office in that goddamned Vault suit,” he choked on his laugh. “Spent so many damned late nights dreaming about dragging that zipper down as far as it’d go and taking you over the desk…”

He bit her earlobe and ran his tongue beneath it, knowing it’d drive her up the wall and loving the way it always made her shudder violently beneath him. The sound she made when he did so was sinful and he repeated the action just to hear it again.

“You drive me crazy, Nora,” he confessed, allowing the heat from his breath to blow against her neck; gooseflesh rising where it kissed her. “I’ve never loved anything like I love you.”

“Nick..,” she started to say before her words were lost to a gasp.

He sank into her willing heat in one sharp thrust, enjoying the way her body closed tightly around his own as he filled her. Poised and buried between the apex of her thighs, Nick gazed down at the scarred body of his wife. He’d been with her for nearly every cut and scrape that marred her silken flesh, had treated some of the wounds himself, and loved each and every mark on her. Her body was a memory of their lives together, inside and out; and she was beautiful like that, he thought. Both inside and out. 

He’d loved her that night they’d stood together in the rain. Loved her because she was beautiful and brave. Loved her because she was smart and funny. Loved her because she loved him for who he was and walked beside him like he was worth more than a tattered trench coat and a little office down on Third street in Diamond City. She was the girl he waited for; for weeks; for months; for years. The girl he’d been waiting for, long before they’d ever met. A girl who’d once been a ghost in his processors; a daydream he’d entertained, made real when that door in Vault 114 slid open and something in his drives glitched at the sight of her.

He’d kept his distance, even as he followed at her back; dreaming of what could be if she’d only turn around. Dreaming until that night at his office when she’d made his wish for a life of his own into a reality. He no longer needed to dream about her from a distance now. She’d long since been his girl; his wife. She was his angel, perfect and scarred and real and _his_. 

And now, she was waiting on him.

He’d share in that wait with her for a lifetime if he needed to. He’d dream of holding her in his arms again until it became reality once more. But, when he figured out a way to get back to her in that other world, the waiting and the dreaming would end for both of them.

He couldn’t remember the reasons he’d made to not join her on her every trip away from Diamond City; knew they’d been excuses for fear she’d grow tired of his possessive desire to keep her close; but he’d been a fool. She was every bit as lost in this connection between them as he was, and he’d long since moved beyond the shame in his desires for her. She desired him and that was all that mattered.

“Tell me what you want, Nora,” he crooned down at her, stroking her clit with the flat of his skeletal hand the way he knew she loved; watching the tremors that wracked her slender frame run their course. “It’s been so long, and your husband wants to please you.”

He had her writhing beneath him each time the metal of his fingers brushed her slick skin.

“Fuck me like we’re already back home, Nick,” she panted; a challenge issued through passion’s haze. “Remind me why we didn’t have to change the name on the office sign.”

“Whatever you need, Doll,” he grinned and locked eyes with her through half-lids, as he began to thrust.

He leaned deeply into her, slapping his hips into hers in a penetrating rhythm that sang his every wanton craving for her. The husky sound of the smoke in her voice pleading her wants and wishes as he undulated violently between her thighs; each thrust igniting new hungers he fantasized about fulfilling, when he was whole and one person again. Her cries of pleasure beguiled him in a siren’s call and he urged her to be louder as he buried himself in her heat. Nora arched her back to better accept him as he pulled her hips ever closer to his own in a feverish need to drive himself deeper.

Nick shifted until his chest was flush to her own, uttering gravel-toned words of adoration and vulgarity against her skin as his insatiable mouth took possession of every inch of flesh he could reach. Her fingers curved into the back panels of his skull; his bit at her hips in bruising pressure; the conversation between their fingers and skin becoming the most important words they’d ever express.

He could hear the blood thrumming in her veins as the aching tension built up between them and he fucked her with a burgeoning frenzy brought on by the enticing image of her thrashing beneath him and the keening wails of gratification he drew from her throat with every goddamned thrust of his cock into her soaking hole.

Looming over her, he felt the familiar squeezing tightness start to form around him, and he savored the look of complete abandonment written across Nora’s face.

“Come for me, Doll,” he begged, stretching her softness in quick hard thrusts. “Sing me that sweet love song of yours. Remind your husband you haven’t forgotten his name.”

She locked eyes with him as that glass moment splintered and she broke to pieces as he rode her hard and rough through the waves of her release. She cried his name without restraint, the smoke in her voice thick and born of fire. 

The possessive glare she threw him in the moment after was so raw and desirous, it shocked him; and his hips bucked wildly as she pulled him to her, startling him with the intimacy of the kiss she branded him with in that instant.

“Hey, Valentine,” she whispered against his lips, the sultriest of all her love songs. “Want me to sing it again?”

Her tongue pushed between the labored line of his lips and she tasted him; so deep and tenderly, he broke, moaning his pleasure into the wet velvet of her mouth as he stiffened and stilled against her; lightning sparking in hot flashes as it coursed through his sensors.

“Jesus, Nora..,” he gasped, as his body trembled above hers. “That was…”

“ _Intense_ ,” she laughed, rolling her hips wickedly against him and sending a whole new wave of shudders through his synthetic skin.

“That’s one way of putting it,” he chuckled breathlessly, rolling off her and drawing her with him until she was sprawled tightly against his side. “You alright, Doll?”

“I’m golden,” she assured him brightly between breaths. “Just...just need a moment.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said in amusement, placing kisses to the silk of her hair and taking in the familiar scent of her soap. “Not yet, anyway.”

He felt the little stutter of her heart through his sensor net.

“Stay,” she whispered against his skin. “Stay where I can see you this time.”

“I promise you, Doll,” he caught her chin and dragged her up where his mouth could reach hers. “I’m trying.”

They made love again in that bed under the sunlight; slow and sensual and in the way Nick had never allowed himself to indulge in when his passions ran to burning and his need for her outweighed his desire for gentility. He murmured every sweet word he’d ever known for her, and kept under lock and key in his head, ardently writing them into little love letters against her skin as he rolled their hips together in a tender, unhurried pace.

He sang every chorus and verse of her name until he fell apart for the second time in her arms, finishing the song with one whispered note of “Nora”.

They lay together for several hours afterwards, touching and talking and connecting like they used to. Nora told him about what happened after they’d made it to the Railroad. About John taking care of her for three weeks as he brought her down off the chems. About waking to the news Nick was alive, but different now. About standing across the room from a man she recognized, but who couldn’t remember her last name.

She told him about Doctor Birk and the full story as she knew it about what had happened to Nick through the years. She told him about Doctor Amari’s theory on the disconnect and about how the Institute _had_ been at fault for Nick’s many woes; just not in the way they’d always thought.

She talked about the man Nick had met in the other room, about how he said and did things that were memories bleeding through, even if neither Nick knew it yet. She told him how he’d sat with her the first night she’d seen his synthetic shell lying there in shambles on a set of card tables, and of how he’d held her hand for hours as she’d held the hand of the house that had once contained her husband.

He told her about his conversation with Deacon when they’d reactivated him, about the surge and the fear he’d known as his systems shut down. He talked about waking up alone in that apartment on Monroe and Third and the sorrow and confusion he felt as his days bled into one another without the ability to tell the time anymore. He spoke of vivid dreams he’d had early on in his imprisonment, where he’d gotten flashes of memory so wildly real, he would have sworn they might be, but that they weren’t from the time before the bombs. Thinking on them now, he lamented that they might have been moments where his memories and the memories of his other body were trying to merge. There’d be one instance in particular, one where he’d been in a little bathroom he thought might be in HQ. Nick spoke about suddenly just being there, in that body, as it stood before a little medicine cabinet mirror.

He’d been readjusting his tie, finding it tightly knotted and the buttons of his shirt done up right to the collar. When he’d finished, he caught the reflection of a man with real skin, and hair and grey eyes staring back at him and Nick had panicked. He’d woken up on the couch in that damned apartment, finding it more ruined than it had been previously. The more times the flashes happened, the less Nick allowed himself to sleep, until he stopped lying down altogether. 

At first, he’d felt a strange sort of pull to rest, and his mind would suddenly be thinking about very specific subjects, but the more that subject had become Nora, the less inclined Nick had been to share information with whatever was compelling him to do so. He felt foolish now for doing so, but at the time, his memories were all he’d had left and he’d refused to give up anything to do with his wife if he could stop it.

It wasn’t until she’d kissed that other man’s cheek that Nick had any idea what might be going on. He’d woken up on the couch, not recalling that he’d even laid down, and the sensors burned where he would have sworn she’d touched him. The sensations increased over time until the day he felt her kiss ghost over his lips; had felt her skin under her hands; had felt their hips meeting as he sank into her; and he’d wanted to die when he realized the sensations weren’t dreams, but another man’s reality. 

She cried and held him tightly after that, even as he assured her with soothing words and caresses that he understood things differently now. Looking back, those moments had been what kept him sane, even as the thought of another man touching her burned him. He’d looked forward to her phantom caresses and took comfort in them, all the while aching to experience them in the moment with her, himself.

He understood now though that there was no other man in her bed; that it was _him_ , as he’d always been and not just a human he’d been copied from. He begged her not to leave that other version of him out there now, begged her to keep touching him and loving him; because Nick would be able to feel it. He needed that reminder now more than ever, until he was standing in that body whole and perfect and beside her again. 

They laughed together about the oddity of it all and that, out of all the strange things they’d lived through in the Commonwealth together, this experience had been one for the books. 

For a while after, they reminisced about their lives, about the memories they both shared; while Nick played with her hair and Nora drew little circles on his chest with her finger. They spoke candidly about all the things they’d kept hidden; fears and desires alike. Nick was surprised to learn that Nora had feared he might grow tired of her someday, when she was older or when she’d kept him waiting one day too long. He’d told her that, passionate as they’d always been with one another, he’d held back and waited for her for fear she’d someday find his constant need to touch her revolting. 

By the end of the conversation, they both realized what fools they’d been and laughed again at how well suited their cards were for one another. 

As morning turned to afternoon, Nora slid into his button-down and Nick pulled on his trousers and over a shared cup of coffee, she walked him through her old apartment. She explained how it was the place she’d spent years dreaming of during her time in the Commonwealth and sheepishly admitted this wasn’t the first time she’d thought of Nick being with her in the rooms she used to own.

They stood on her balcony full of roses as evening rolled in and Jo Stafford kicked onto the stereo singing _September in the Rain_. Nick took her hand and danced with her in that little garden as she told him stories her brother had made up about her, due to the long hours she’d spent out there in the summers. How Buster had teased her about being a princess trapped in a tower full of books with nothing to do but wait out on that balcony, until a Prince clever enough to make his way up there dropped in to save her from her boring--according to Buster--life of law briefs. 

Nick teased her about it too, claiming he’d known all along she was waiting for a Prince and she’d been playing him the whole day. She told him she preferred detectives over princes and happened to know one who’d been clever enough to finally make it up to her little balcony. Nick had been rather incredulous that he was the first guy besides her brother to stand out there with her, but when he realized she wasn’t spinning him a yarn and she’d blushed shyly over the whole thing, he’d kissed her in that little garden above the city until both of them were running hot and desperate again. They’d barely made it to the couch before she was sitting in his lap and soaking through the front of his trousers again. He’d pulled open the button-down as she worked to free him from his pants and as she rode him, his mouth molded intimately over her breast and they came together in a frenzied, awkward way not unlike the first time she’d slid into his lap at the office. 

They stayed still joined together in that position for awhile, trading clever barbs in place of foreplay and teasing kisses stolen between breaths, until Nick finally broke, flipping her onto her knees atop that old mid-century and thrusting into her from behind in a quick and heated fuck. She was liquid fire as she egged him on with those damned dirty phrases she came home with every time she’d gone drinking with Hancock, and he’d tumbled violently towards his finish, grateful for once, that in the end, this was just a space created in the depths of the Memory Den; for he was sure he’d have bruised her otherwise.

She giggled when he finally sank down onto the couch beside her and he’d slapped her ass for being such a goddamned tease.

The dame drove him crazy and he loved her for it.

He prayed that his other body was packing some stamina with all that flesh and bone. His wife was insatiable and Nick had a reputation to uphold with her.

As the hour grew late, and the Grandfather clock’s hands drew nearer to the dreaded time when the day would end and they’d be separated again, a wistful melancholy set in upon them both. They stood together under the stars among the roses of her balcony as Dean Martin crooned _I’m the One Who Loves You_ from the record player.

Every touch and kiss grew just a little bit more desperate as they whispered words of everlasting devotion and promises of love to one another. Despite no longer knowing the time, Nick was counting every second she was still in his arms.

“It won’t be long,” Nora tried to laugh cheerfully. “And it’ll be a little different, but not much. You’ll just...you’ll just have to get used to seeing grey staring back at you in the mirror from now on.”

“Suppose having to eat will be a new experience,” he noted with a wry chuckle. “Lotta things I’ll be able to indulge in once I get outta here. Like sleeping with you again.”

“And shower sex,” she teased optimistically.

“Put that one high on the priority list,” he laughed, holding her tight. “I’m looking forward to it, Nora. Truly.”

“Just gotta solve that riddle first,” she sighed, rubbing circles into his back.

Nick was quiet for a long moment, memorizing the scent of her hair and the way she fit so neatly under his chin. God, he was going to miss her.

“If..,” he choked out. “If we can’t solve it…”

“Then we’ll have to move to Goodneighbor,” she looked up at him, the stars brightly in her eyes. “And I’ll become a night resident of the Memory Den.”

“Hardly seems fair,” Nick shook his head, thinking of his other body, and the memories that were alive and in love with her, therein. “I’m still out there as much as I’m stuck in here.”

“We’d work it out,” she promised. “I won’t let either of you be alone. Not if I can help it.”

“You’re an angel, you know that?” he murmured, setting kisses into her dark locks.

“And I’m in love with you, Nick,” she kissed his chest. “Don’t forget that.”

“We’ll figure it out,” he vowed. “I want that life out there with you, again. However long it takes, I promise I’ll meet you back home someday. So...so wait for me.”

“Always,” she nodded, glancing up.

Nick felt her stiffen in his arms.

“What’s wrong?” he asked in alarm.

“N-nothing,” she breathed, her eyes wide and staring at him. “It’s just...just…”

One delicate hand reached up, gently brushing against his cheek. She smiled and gave a short huff of a laugh as she pulled her fingers away.

“What is it?” he asked quietly, trying not to worry.

“Tears,” she whispered.

Even in the low light of the stars, Nick could see the dampness coating her fingers. It was as clear as canned water.

From the room within, the clock began to strike the Midnight hour and Nick pulled Nora against him, meeting her mouth in desperation for one last kiss. She matched him stroke for stroke as they fought against the chimes. He held her to his chest with with frantic, bruising pressure, wrapping himself around her as if that alone would keep her here. 

“I love you,” he breathed into her hair.

“Don’t forget the flowers,” she murmured, pressing her ear tight to his chest. 

“See you at seven,” he whispered.

And then, as if she’d been stolen away by the summer breeze, she was gone.

The record player fell silent.

And Nick was once again alone.

He closed his eyes and shakily slid his hands into his trouser pockets, leaning back and breathing in the warm air of Nora’s dream, as fresh streams of clear water ran down his torn cheeks.

It was a hell of a time to learn to cry, but he had enough tears stored up now to keep those rivers running for a lifetime.

Nick prepared himself for the inevitable. For the moment when he’d open his eyes and be back in that horrible little room with the bay window and the solitary leather couch amid white walls. He strained to hear the soft click of lights going out in the apartment and felt the moment when the summer breeze he’d been living in fell short and failed to blow.

It had been a wonderful dream while it lasted.

Nick resigned himself to his current fate, bolstered as his thumb ran over the band of silver still present on his left hand. At least he still had the ring. A tiny memory to keep him from doubting today had ever taken place.

With a sigh, Nick made to open his eyes, just as the record player kicked back on and the hum of the room lights restarted. He blinked as the summer breeze picked back up, playfully tugging at his tie and reminding him of Nora.

He was still standing on her balcony of roses.

What was Amari waiting for? Why hadn’t she sent him back to his prison yet?

Curiosity getting the better of him now, Nick stepped cautiously back into Nora’s sunny apartment. Doris Day was singing him a lullaby to _Someday I’ll Find You_ from the record player, where a new photograph of Nick and Nora dancing on the balcony now sat. The old quilt from Red Rocket was draped neatly over the back of the mid-century couch, beside his trench coat and a new set of clothing. There was a fresh pot of coffee on the counter and a black mug waiting beside it, sitting atop a cardboard shipping box.

Nick made his way across the room, trailing the fingers of his good hand over the quilt as he went by. He removed the black coffee mug from the box, noting it wasn’t fully black; little white stars dotted the glazed surface. A perfect match for the stars that shone over Diamond City each night.

His lips twitched into a smile as he set the mug carefully upon the countertop and turned his attention to the box. He untied the blue yarn bow it’d been wrapped up in and was met by a little greeting card with a brightly painted sun on the front. Inside, the card had familiar handwriting; looping and feminine and precise.

_Thought you might prefer a change in scenery while you work._  
_-Amari_

“God,” Nick laughed through a sob of joy. “Bless that woman.”

He set the card to stand beside the mug on the counter, and reached deeper into the box, his metal claw clinking against something smooth. Pulling the object free, Nick snorted in amusement.

It was a glass slipper. Just about Nora’s size too.

He poured himself some coffee in his new mug and made his way over to the couch, carrying his Cinderella’s misplaced shoe with great care. He set the slipper delicately down on the center of the coffee table and sat staring at it for a while.

The little apartment seemed empty without Nora at his side, but it was still warm and painted an inviting shade of yellow and her books and journals remained where he’d last seen them, lined up on the shelves. The scent of her roses mixed with the warm coffee in the air and the record player crooned sweet love songs for its singular audience on the couch. It was a nice place to spend eternity if he had to, but it was a better place to hang around for a little while until he could find a way home to his wife.

As the clock chimed three and the coffeemaker ran dry, he kicked off his shoes and pulled the patchwork quilt from Red Rocket over himself.

Nick fell asleep on the mid-century couch in the heart of Nora’s old apartment and dreamed.

He dreamed of walking down a pretty ritzy looking street, after getting lost in a city park, still lush and green and full of flowers. He dreamed of walking up to a big brownstone house with the biggest roses out in the front garden he’d ever seen. He dreamed of a big purple tree, a wisteria tree, and a girl with dark hair and a cream-colored dress sitting beneath it in the sunshine; reading.

She looked up as he approached.

“Hey, Valentine,” she sang him her love song; a light and airy greeting. “Long time no see, partner.”

“Thought you headed for home,” he breathed, drinking in the sight of her.

“This is my home,” she smiled brightly. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“You..,” he looked at her carefully now and realized she was missing the little silvery scar across her cheek. “You’re not really Nora are you.”

“Just your memories of her,” she reached out to him and, memory or not, Nick slid his metal claw into her delicate hand. “How are you feeling?”

“Better, I think,” he admitted, taking a seat beside her and pressing into her side. Even as a dream, she was a warm and welcome companion against his solitude. “Glad to be out of that damn apartment off Monroe and Third, that’s for certain. Kind of anxious to get back home though.”

“You built up a pretty solid memory block,” Nora chided softly, rubbing small circles against the steel of his hand. “But you’re halfway there, I think.”

“Oh, yeah?” he chuckled. “How do you figure?”

“You’ve stopped thinking of yourself as separate,” she smiled. “You know you’re not really a machine now, right?”

“Guess that’s true,” he admitted. “Why isn’t that enough?”

“Because the drive’s been partitioned,” she shrugged. “And your mind is looking for a way to connect the files.”

“The other Nick...the other me said something about that. That the answer was something that had started both our lives,” he shook his head. “But the only thing I can think of is you.”

“Because I know how to light up a room?” she teased.

“Something like that. Why _do_ I dream about you in the sunlight, Doll?” he asked bluntly.

“The answer’s right in front of you, Nick,” she murmured. “It’s been staring you right in the face. You’re just not looking at it yet.”

“You drive me crazy, you know that,” he leaned forward and kissed her head.

“I don’t mean to,” she gave him a sad smile and raised the metal claw to her lips, pressing a kiss to it. “The human brain’s a funny thing. It knows what it wants to say, but sometimes, you have to read between the lines to see what it’s trying to tell you.” 

“I’ll figure it out,” he promised her softly, stroking her cheek with his undamaged hand.

“You look good in that ring,” she beamed up at him.

“Gotta work on getting one for you next,” he hummed, pulling her against his chest. 

“Is that a proposal?” she laughed.

“Just a promise,” he murmured. “You’re already my wife.”

“The kind of girl you’d always been waiting for,” she said in amusement, the book in her lap falling between them. “With a house full of books and a silver key.”

“Something like that,” he agreed, picking up the book that had fallen and handing it back to her. “That one any good?”

“I think so,” she nodded, stroking the cover.

“Where’d you get it?” he inquired.

“From my brother,” she said wistfully. “He thought I’d like it. He thought you’d like it, too.”

“Don’t think I ever met your brother,” he looked at her quizzically now.

“You just don’t remember him yet, but you will, I think,” she said. “You just need to keep _looking backwards_. You and that other Nick.”

“Why’s that, Doll?” he asked softly.

“Because you’re looking for a glimpse of sunshine, remember?” she urged him. “Something that lit up your shadows. All you need is a glimpse.”

Nick couldn’t fathom what she’d meant by it, but he could see by the expression on her face that she wanted him to. The human mind was a funny thing.

“I’ll...keep working on it,” he nodded. “Do you mind, ah...do you mind if I stay with you awhile?”

“I’ll be with you forever, Nick,” she coaxed him to lie down, gently stroking the skin behind his ear when his head finally came to rest in her lap. “I’ll always be waiting in the memories that made you happiest. Under the wisteria tree, beneath the stars, just inside the office door.”

“I miss you,” he confessed, rubbing his tattered cheek into the soft material of her dress.

“So come find me,” she murmured soothingly. “You’re an amazing detective, Nick. You just haven’t seen it yet.”

Nick lay in her lap beneath the wisteria tree, in front of the big brownstone house with a rose garden, feeling strangely content as her fingers brushed over his skin.

He felt the warm breeze and the scent of roses mixing with coffee as they fluttered in from the balcony of her downtown apartment.

He listened to the soft, calm beating of his heart.

He dreamed of sunlight stepping out of the shadows, and the girl he waited for. 

And for the first time in over a month, Nick fell asleep.


	33. Almost Human

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, god...bolster me here guys. Work is killing the speed at which I'm writing this week. -_- 
> 
> Sorry this one took so long! Enjoy! <3

Nora woke to the sound of Doctor Amari’s voice calling her name.

“What...what time is it?” she croaked out. She was somewhere pitch black, though it felt like she was still in the pod.

“Almost 5:30,” Amari said in a soothing tone. She was speaking through some sort of built in sound system. “How are you feeling, Nora?” 

“I’m..,” she cringed and grit her teeth. This was the part they never seemed to mention in fairy tales; the morning after and all the feelings that came with it after a night at the ball. Going back to a pumpkin again wasn’t a walk in the park after you’d danced with the prince. Cinderella had it _tough_. “I’m alright. Why can’t I see anything?”

“The memory pod is in extended use mode,” Amari explained. “The glass tints darker after the first hour to help maintain connectivity with the user. It will start to lighten soon, I promise.”

“How,” she choked on the question, trying not to think about the man she’d left behind. The man she loved. “How’s Nick?”

“I think you’ll find both of them to be in fine condition right now,” Amari assured her. “I thought it best to change living quarters for the synthetic version. I hope you don’t mind, but I borrowed the memory you were using for him. He’ll be there now.”

He’d be in her apartment with the rose garden. He wouldn’t be back in that broken room.

“Thank you, Elena,” Nora breathed, relaxing a bit into the cushions of the pod as the light level began to rise. The next time she was in Goodneighbor, Nora would be bringing Doctor Amari a gift basket of her favorite scotch.

“It was no trouble,” Amari’s voice said warmly. “Now, let’s get you out of that pod, shall we? There’s someone here waiting for you.”

For a moment, Nora wondered who it could be, even as the glass began to clear and foggy shapes came into view. It seemed a bit early for John to be up and about yet. The aversion treatments usually went until after the dinner hour, on account the long relaxation immersement part. It was an oddly effective treatment; exposure to the fear out of context, relate it to some sort of peaceful place and feeling instead, repeat. John always expressed boredom afterwards, but Nora found herself visualizing those serene bright blue skies every time she stepped into a bad situation now. It helped her stay calm.

She wondered absently, if John would do better with different imagery to focus on. The blue skies were fine, but he’d probably feel more at home with them if some sort of Jet filter was applied. 

Nora blinked hard and squinted as light flooded the pod and the glass became clear. She rubbed at her eyes with the too long arms of Nick’s trench coat before huddling further inside it. Much as she’d laughed, he was right; she would have turned blue without it. She always felt cold when she slept alone.

“There now,” Amari’s voice echoed through the glass. “Let me raise the top for you.”

With a hiss, the glass egg split open and Nora coughed as the filtered air of the pod rushed out to join with the regular air of the Commonwealth. Amari was at her side in a moment with a can of purified water.

“Just take it slow,” she encouraged Nora. “You’ve never been in for a long session before outside of the aversion pods. It’s a bit different this way... takes some getting used to I’m afraid. Here, drink. It will help with the disorientation.”

Nora nodded and gratefully accepted the water, sipping it a moment, before throwing it back in a sudden rage of thirst. She hadn’t realized how dry it was in those pods. 

“I would recommend eating dinner and having an early night,” Amari said wryly. “But if you must go and party with the good Mayor, at least remember to drink water with your libations.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Nora saluted. It was a comical thing considering the size of Nick’s coat on her and the way it covered her hands as she’d moved them.

“I trust things went well?” Amari inquired with a pointed look.

“Very well, yes,” Nora nodded, in what she thought might have been the greatest understatement of her life. “Still no answer to the riddle, but...he’s working on it.”

Seeing Nick again like _that_... _being_ with him again like that...she wouldn’t trade those hours now for all the caps in the Commonwealth. Even so, leaving him had been...the worst thing she could imagine, honestly. She hadn’t been joking with him about becoming a permanent night resident of the Memory Den if things went South with this whole riddle business. She’d make it work, somehow, if she had to. She’d never let him live alone again if the worst came to pass.

She hoped the worst wouldn’t come to pass, though. She wanted their lives back as much as he did. 

“I’m happy to hear it,” Amari told her. “I’ll leave you to it then. Mayor Hancock should be up and about again by the time you’ve eaten something.”

As Amari made to leave, Nora stopped her in confusion.

“Didn’t you say there was someone waiting for me?” she asked.

“Of course,” Amari smiled kindly. She gestured just beyond Nora’s vision, behind the pods. “He’s sitting right there. I pulled him out of the sleep induction before waking you.”

Nora’s heart skipped a beat. The other pod was open and empty. Nick...was in the room, so why hadn’t he said anything?

She heard Amari slip out the door as she leaned forward, rubbing life back into her legs after lying in the pod for so long. From where she sat, she could just make out the edge of his trousers.

This was silly.

Stumbling out of the pod, Nora stood on shaky legs and rounded back towards Amari’s desk. Nick, the human Nick, sat in one of the office chairs, looking oddly nervous.

And panicked. 

He jerked sharply to his feet, knocking the chair he’d been sitting in back into the long desk. He stared at her.

Nora had seen that exact same look he was giving her now on another man who looked just like him. A man who’d looked at her in the same kind of panic as if she could break his heart with a thought. A man she’d just left standing on her balcony full of roses.

What was it with Valentines and doubt.

Wrapping his coat tighter around herself, Nora prepared to take the lead again; when he beat her to it.

“So...so it went alright?” he asked nervously. His hands flexed at his sides as if he wanted to touch her. As if he wasn’t sure he ought to.

“More than all right. It was good to see you like that again and not...not on that table,” she reassured him with an easy smile. “How ‘bout you? You okay?”

“Sure, sure...I’m swell, Doll. Just, ah..,” he gestured weakly, glancing at the pod she’d stepped out of. “Might’ve gotten a little worried there for a minute. Didn’t expect to be the first one out and, ah, it seemed to be taking a while to get you to come around. Maybe that’s how these damn things work, but...started to think you weren’t gonna open those eyes again.”

Whatever she’d expected him to say; it wasn’t that. Her surprise kept her silent for a moment too long, and he shuffled with nervous energy before her.

“R-ridiculous, I know,” he gave a timid chuckle, rubbing the back of his neck in his unease. “You, ah...you sure you’re doin’ alright?”

Nora suddenly felt like laughing as a sharp pull behind her ribs filled her chest. What was it with Valentines and keeping their hearts so firmly on their sleeves? One thing was for certain: He’d never stop surprising her with that charm of his.

Nick took an interest in his shoes just around the time his ears began to turn red.

“To be honest,” she admitted, her lip already twitching. “I am a bit cold.”

His gaze shot back up to hers, a shy expression of relief and something like hope crossing his features.

“Probably not used to sitting still for that long, the way you’re always running,” he noted sheepishly. “Coat not help?”

“It did,” she nodded, an impish glint in her eye. “Even so...think I could use a space heater right about now. Know any?”

If surprise had a name, in that moment, it would have been Nick Valentine.

“There’s..,” he cleared his throat, the corners of his mouth flickering towards the ceiling. “There’s this one guy I know. Tends to run a bit hot. Might, ah...might moonlight as a radiator when the detective business runs slow.” 

“Does he make house calls?” she inquired innocently, leaning against the memory pod. “Because my legs aren’t really cooperating with me right now. Not really used to sitting that long, you know?”

“Think he’d go for it,” he said nonchalantly with a shrug, though the flush in his cheeks gave his game away. “If the right dame were to call him up for one.”

“What kind of dame would that be?” she asked, more serious than she’d been a moment before.

“The kind he might be looking to spend the rest of his life with,” he murmured. “If she’d still have him.”

“And all she’d have to do is call him up and let him know?” she fidgeted in the long sleeves of his coat; eyes bright and earnest.

“That’s right,” he licked his lips. “Girl like that? I think he’d come running.”

In all their days together, past or present, it was one of the first times Nora could ever remember Nick taking the lead between them when he’d had too long to think on something and self-doubt took up residence in his chest.

Maybe it’d be a small step for other people, but this kind of courage in matters of the heart with her detective? That was a beautiful thing. Radiant even. 

That kind of confidence deserved to be rewarded.

“Hey, Valentine,” she sang him a love song full of warmth and longing; the soft curl of her lips sharing in the sentiment of the tune. “Mind warming me up?”

“Anytime,” he exhaled and had her tightly encased by his arms in one eager step.

The tremor still wracking her knees became a temporary quake in his embrace and she gripped the back of his shirt to keep from falling. Tucked beneath the whisper of stubble on his chin, Nora listened to the desperate rhythmic beat of his heart and inhaled deeply to keep calm in the storm threatening to pour rain drops down her cheeks.

She loved the steady cadence of that tune playing just for her.

It was the most sublime sound in existence.

It was the same sweet music she’d heard as he’d held her on that balcony of roses, just before the clock struck Midnight.

“You’re shaking,” he whispered, sliding one hand up into the silk of her hair and breathing her in.

“I’m just happy,” she sighed, content to stay where she was for all eternity. “You weren’t _really_ doubting me again, were you? Doubting this?”

“Never,” he rained kisses against her dark locks. “Wasn’t sure if you’d need some time though...thought you might want a couple of days to sort things out. I can...I can wait, if you need me to.”

“No,” she shook her head adamantly, tugging at his tie. “No more waiting.”

Nick needed no more invitation than that. The first brush of his lips against hers was feather-soft; a whisper of the ardent thirst that lay beneath. He met her with slow, languishing caresses; each a long held note of the love songs he composed in the space where his tongue swept against her own.

“You drive me crazy, you know that?” he moaned softly as she drank his air and left him breathless for more. His hands slid down her sides beneath her borrowed layers; splayed fingers catching hold of her hips and dragging them against his own. “Gonna need that coat back if I want to maintain my dignity getting out of here.”

“Thought you wanted me to try it on again later,” the smoke on her laugh just then was the very definition of suggestive.

“It’ll be _all_ you’ll have on later,” he promised through a groan; the idea already making him burn. “Prefer to indulge in that somewhere a bit more private than Amari’s office though. Somewhere I can take my time with you.”

“We could always see if the Rexford has a room for the night,” she offered helpfully. Her own hands snuck down below his belt, urging him back into her.

“Christ—!” he choked out, trembling as she rocked against him. “I won’t make it out of my trousers, let alone this room, if you keep that up.”

She giggled wickedly and slid from his grasp; her eyes full of hell and temptation.

“Too bad we’re supposed to meet John down at the Third Rail in a bit,” she said with a coquettish air. “Or I’d help you with those.”

“You goddamned tease,” he huffed; incredulous at all the ways she set him ablaze. He’d never be bored with her; not in a million years. “You leave me burning all night, and you’ll have fire on your hands when we’re alone.”

“I certainly hope so,” she hummed appreciatively; eyes raking over him with impish glee. “I like it hot.”

Nick gaped at her audacity and in two quick strides, he was on her again. His kiss was anything but gentle this time; his tongue demanding entrance and dragging against her own until he was swallowing down every gasp of her air. Though he was no stranger to the heat that always seemed to exist between them and the feverish need she infected him with, Nick had always tried for some _semblance_ of gentility, even in his roughest handling of her flesh, when his mind ran white-hot and she urged him on with her demure little demands of pleasure. The wash of shame such strong desires flooded him with was always in the back of his mind, much as he wished to push past it.

This feeling, however, was...oddly _familiar_ , and for once he reveled in complete abandonment.

As he assaulted her lips with bruising need, somewhere through the haze he felt her reach between them and for a moment, he was sure she’d popped the button hidden behind his belt. He was just about beyond caring who might catch them in the act, when she dragged one of his hands down and into the open waistband of her tattered jeans. Nick’s fingers slid further South of their own accord the moment his palm grazed the smooth skin of her abdomen, and the groan that rippled in his throat when he slipped beneath the scrap of cotton she wore was downright reprobate in nature.

“Jesus, Nora—,” he panted, rubbing his fingers between the small patch of sodden curls; slicking his flesh in the wet length between them. 

She clung to him as he worked against her, intoxicated by the sounds she made each time his hand pressed further into her jeans. 

“You’re not the only one burning tonight,” she gasped into his ear, her hand reaching down to his wrist and stilling his efforts even as she rolled her hips against him one more time. “Simmer with me for a while, Mister Valentine. Half the fun’s adding fuel to the fire.”

Nick shuddered and held her to his chest as he slowly freed his hand from her jeans, chewing on her suggestion as she worked to rebutton them. They’d never played at _this_ kind of game before; at least, not that he could remember. The idea of sitting beside her all night in anticipation of what might come in the time _after_ sent a heady wave of desire straight to his groin. He could already think of quite a number of things he’d like to do with her at the moment, and he imagined that number would grow exponentially the longer they toyed with one another. 

He felt her nimble hand pulling at his own again, bringing him instantly out of the thoughts racing through his head. 

Nick’s heart pounded wildly; she took his first two fingers and slid them between her lips. The moan that escaped him when he felt the hot, wet velvet of her tongue dragging along his flesh as she pulled them back out again was the most indecent thing he’d ever said to her. Their conversation on the road to Goodneighbor came back to him, and he was suddenly desperate for those lips to be wrapped around something other than his fingers. 

He ignored the tinge of admonishment trying to rise up in his mind; favoring the anxious buzz of excitement zipping through his veins. An evening spent riling each other up with words full of double meanings, suggestive glances, and touches playing at innocence lay before them; building up the heat between their bodies in a drawn out game of foreplay. And when they finally came together…

Oh, when they finally came together..!

They’d both be boiling.

It’d be a duel of self-control amidst them tonight; a challenge of wits to make the other’s discipline break first.

Nora was an expert tease, but Nick, Nick could be a shameless flirt. He’d learned how to coat his tongue in silver over the years, even if he’d shied away from taking things beyond talk before he’d met Nora. He might not have _really_ had the sordid reputation the boys down at the station assumed he did, but he hadn’t earned the _assumption_ of that reputation on appearance alone.

The possibility of rejection had always tempered him in the past, but knowing how Nora felt about him, knowing that she was dripping for him just as much as he was hard and aching for her; it left Nick feeling bolder than he’d ever been in his life. He’d spent a small lifetime interrogating hardened criminals and sweet talking molls to get information; this game played to his strengths and Nick was determined not to be the first one to crack.

He snaked a hand into her hair with a cool and sensual touch that left her trembling before he’d dipped his mouth oh-so-casually beside her ear and began his attack.

“Let me take you out to dinner,” he suggested, and in another time, in another place; in a nightclub with low-lighting and rooms full of smoke and jazz, it wouldn’t have been a suggestion so much as a _promise_ of a night spent with a man who knew what he wanted, how he wanted it and who he wanted it with. “Amari did say you needed to eat, and I wouldn’t mind taking a turn about the town with a girl like you on my arm, before we meet up with John.”

“Sounds like you have more than just dinner on the mind, Detective,” she purred, sliding a hand up the front of his shirt, and molding her palm to every inch of him, as delicate fingers ghosted over that damn spot behind his ear that always had him in pieces. He clenched his teeth and grunted, trying to keep his composure. Leave it to his sweet girl to go straight for the kill; she was a pro at this, that much was for certain.

He should have expected this. She was his partner, after all.

Strike one against him. He’d have to keep his guard up if he didn’t want to lose his cards.

“Don’t get ahead of me, Doll,” he crooned, pulling that hand into his own and pressing it to his lips in the gentlest of caresses. “Got all night to get you sizzling before we dance.”

“Dunno if I’m dressed for dancing,” she said innocently, though the look she gave him was anything but.

“You won’t need to be dressed for the kinda dancing I’ve got in mind,” he said smoothly, giving her the detached look he’d always worn when out on the job. The look Jenny had always said made him look dangerous. “Now give me back my coat and we’ll get going.”

“Aren’t you afraid I’ll get cold?” she asked coyly, even as she slid it from her shoulders.

“I’m sure I can warm you up somehow,” Nick said with a smirk, taking the trench coat from her and slipping back into it with a casual ease, even as he buttoned the front to hide the bulge blatantly on display in his trousers. “Bet a dame like you could take a lotta heat.”

“I can swallow down _whatever_ you’re offering,” she said, the smoke in her voice a scandalous wildfire.

“You’ll be swallowing down _everything_ I’m offering,” he rasped harshly, forgetting his composure. “Now get up those stairs before I forget my manners and take you on this floor.”

“Slow down, Detective,” she winked and gave him the once over, even as she slipped through the door. “We’ve got a whole night yet ahead of us.” 

At the rate she was going, Nick prayed he’d last that long.

He’d never get bored with her; not ever. 

Especially when she could walk up a set of stairs like _that_. Nick stepped out of Amari’s office just in time to catch the rolling sway of her hips as she ascended. His mind helpfully supplied him with the image of her in heels and a tight black pencil skirt, the kind that were all the rage with the lady lawyers back in the day, going up to the courthouse for a case. He’d cleared his throat and had to adjust himself when he’d stared a moment too long and she’d caught him in the act, calling to him teasingly from the floor above. Just for that, Nick had been extra attentive when he’d said goodbye to Irma, moving closer than was strictly necessary as he’d offered her a light for her cigarette, and throwing her his most charming smile and a non-committal answer when she’d suggested she had other things he could light up sometime.

Nora actually flushed at that one and for a moment, Nick thought she might really be angry, but as they stepped outside the Memory Den and into the street, she’d stretched; long and sumptuously until the thin cotton shirt she wore stretched up, exposing the flat of her stomach. One of the Neighborhood Watchmen whistled sharply at her from across the avenue, while his buddy suggested she provide them with another kind of show. Nora smirked; a coy, sensuous little twist of her lips and told them she was busy tonight and would have to take a rain check. Nick tried not to be sore about it, even as he wanted to box both ghouls heads as they continued to leer at her long after she’d walked by.

If they’d been in Diamond City, he would have walked her straight up to the Upper Stands and asked that self-righteous Mister Handy for a table in the corner where he’d be assured of the setting and their level of privacy. Unfortunately, a single morning’s walk through Goodneighbor with Hancock didn’t leave him with the same kind of familiarity, and as they strolled through the town square arm in arm, Nick was at a loss as to where dinner might be found; at least dinner that wasn’t handed to them across a food stand. He was in the midst of considering his options when Nora cuddled up to him and suggested they try Daisy’s, as the odds and ends shop offered meals in the evening and had a few tables for those stopping by for dinner.

Daisy seemed overjoyed for their company and Nick played the gentlemen, pulling out Nora’s chair and ghosting his fingers over the exposed skin of her arms as she got settled. He chuckled softly when she shivered and asked in a flirtatious and sonorous tone if she was cold. The glare she shot him slid into a wicked smile; she asked to borrow his coat. Nick remarked that the summer breeze was _awfully_ warm that evening and he didn’t want her to overheat too early. 

Dinner proved a tricky affair for both of them as they played their hands all over the small dinner table; Nick brushing his knuckles along the inside of her knee in the same way he did when he was between her thighs, Nora wrapping her lips around her fork as she slowly pulled small morsels of their meal from it, showing him what something else might look in that mouth. The game went on and on between them, each one raising the stakes by infinitesimal amounts and one upping the other in their places for dominance.

By the time her pink little tongue darted oh-so-innocently out to run the course of her top lip, Nick was seriously considering ditching on the Third Rail and heading straight for the Rexford instead.

“How was it?” Daisy asked, clearing their plates.

“If I wasn’t spoken for, I’d take you home,” Nick winked at her. “Our compliments to the chef.”

“Listen to this sweet talker,” Daisy cackled. “You’ve got a wild one on your hands, Nora.”

“Mmm, you’ve no idea,” she agreed with an evocative little hum. “Say, Daisy...do you still have my Third Rail Special upstairs?”

For a moment, Daisy looked surprised.

“My goodness, I had no idea you were here on that kind of business,” she shook her head. “That cute partner of yours around, then?”

Nick frowned at that. He was sure Nora was up to something now.

“He’s off tonight,” she said smoothly. “But _I’m_ still _on_ for the evening.”

Daisy nodded, as if that meant something _other_ than what Nick had just heard.

“Well, it’s in the bottom drawer, same as always, Dear” she winked and walked off.

“Third Rail Special?” Nick inquired, putting on his most amiable expression and running it under a smooth tone. “Got anything planned I should know about?”

“Just a little something I keep around town when I need it,” Nora said easily, running the toe of her shoe up his trouser leg. She glanced out at the nearly set sun and hummed. “You should probably get down to the third rail. John will be there by now.”

“Thought we were going _together_ , Doll,” he noted, and although he kept the question cool, he was suddenly anything but. 

“Afraid you’ll miss me?” she cooed, running her shoe just a bit higher.

“I always miss you when you’re where I can’t see you,” he said huskily; the line between the game and reality blurring.

Nora’s cheeks grew as red as her roses back in Diamond City for a moment and she cleared her throat. An expression breezed across her features for a moment that was just as foreign to their game as his own words had been. It made Nick want to drop every pretense and spend his life pouring all the words in his heart out at her feet.

“I’m just going to freshen up a bit first,” she said finally, her voice soft, but playful once more. By her second sentence, the wistfulness he’d spotted was gone and the seductress was back in place. “I’ll meet you there.”

She was definitely planning something.

Nick rose, fluid in his motions, and made his way to Nora’s side of the table. He stopped just behind her, leaning down and gently brushing her hair out of the way as he murmured against her ear.

“Don’t keep me waiting long.”

The little gasp she gave bled into a bit-back whine as he pressed his lips to the side of her neck, and let the tip of his tongue taste of the skin there. Nick didn’t wait for her rebuttal, turning easily on his heel and heading out for the Third Rail.

Day had become night in Goodneighbor as he worked his way back towards the town square and the string lights came on as the Gun Ghouls came out for their evening patrols. The starlight crowd was out in force; men and women and ghouls of both types strolling the streets and carousing with their neighbors. Nick doffed his fedora at a young female Minuteman as he passed her by, recognizing her affiliation by the hat she wore. She giggled and ran to catch up with her friends.

While he was grateful for the tour Hancock had given him earlier in the day, Nick hardly needed it to find the Third Rail. Already, he could hear the jazzy music and horns he’d heard the night before filtering up and through the street. He walked into the converted subway station it was housed in, only to be stopped by a mean looking, sharply dressed ghoul with slick white hair.

“John Hancock’s expecting me,” Nick told him casually, unsure if the doorman was just naturally gruff or looking for a fight. “I’m…”

“I know who you are,” the ghoul snorted, unimpressed. “Where’s your girl, Valentine?”

“Meeting me here,” he said coolly.

“Well, try not to shoot anybody tonight,” he grunted and stepped back. 

Nick wasn’t sure what to say to that.

“That something I do often while I’m here?” he asked, only half joking.

“Not recently,” the ghoul’s voice was rough as the remains of his lips quirked upwards. “Been awhile since I’ve had to help Charlie clean blood off the floor. I’d like to keep it that way.”

The bouncer gave him a pointed look before stepping out of the way. 

“Enjoy your evening,” the ghoul nodded.

Nick knew a dismissal when he heard one and he tipped his hat in thanks, eagerly heading down the candlelit stairs as the strains of jazz music pulled at him.

His first thought upon entering the club proper, was that it was like something out of one of those old crime novels. His second thought was that it was packed.

Women, both human and ghoul alike, were decked out in old sequined dresses and well-worn high heels; their hair in tight finger curls and sharp victory rolls. The gents wore dinner jackets with fake flowers, half falling apart in their lapels; their feet tapping along to the music in dusty spectators. 

A few folks were done up in everyday Commonwealth attire, but the majority of the crowd was decked out to the tattered-nines; canoodling on couches, playing cards, and drinking with friends while they smoked enough tobacco to set the house on fire. It reminded Nick of some of the seedier clubs back in Chicago; where the rum ran hot, the bodies ran cold and the gambler’s luck was always in favor of the house.

A ruined hand, cased in a red sleeve and saluting Nick with a bottle of ale caught his eye, and Nick made his way through the raucous crowd towards the bar, noting along the way that the dame in the red dress at the microphone had one hell of a set of pipes on her, and that there were a few odd looking cowboys littering the crowd of patrons.

Literally; cowboys.

“Heya, Nick,” Hancock rasped, the white of his teeth showing. “Thought you two might have stood me up or somethin’.”

“And miss this party?” Nick shook his hand as he finally reached the bar. “We just finished with dinner on account of Nora needing to eat. Amari’s orders.”

“Probably caught her runnin’ on smokes and coffee again,” he shook his head. “That woman don’t miss nothin’. Is Ham up there talkin’ Nora’s ear off again?”

“She’s at Daisy’s place,” Nick explained, speaking louder as the crowd tried to drown him out. “Said she wanted to clean up a bit first.”

“Well, then,” John grinned, waggling the jut of skin that once housed his eyebrows. “Join me in a drink while we wait?”

“Sure,” Nick nodded. “What’s good?”

“Absolutely nothin’,” Hancock laughed and signaled the barman.

A rusty Mister Handy with a smart looking bowler and a Union Jack sticker planted on his form floated over to them.

“Heya Chuck,” John nodded at the bot. “Another round here for me and my friend here.”

When the bot’s eyestalks gathered together and gave him the once over, Nick tipped his hat at the odd little barman.

“Well, well,” it drolled out, it’s accent thick and tinny through its speaker system. “As I live and beep. Thought the boys were pullin’ my transistors when they said you were lookin’ different these days. You actually drinkin’ tonight?”

“I was thinkin’ about it,” Nick slid his hands into his pockets. There was something about that bot he just couldn’t put his finger on. Something that made him want to say something rude about taking a short jump off a high bridge.

“This one’s on the house,” Whitechapel Charlie set a pair of bottles before the men, over enunciating his words in way that you’d probably find the definition of under sarcasm . “On account of this momentous occasion.”

“Oh yeah?” Nick quirked a brow. “And what’s that?”

“The day Nick Valentine finally lowered himself to drink in my fine establishment,” the old bot might not have had a mouth, but if it did, Nick was certain it’d be sneering. “Cheers!”

Hancock chuckled as the Mister Handy floated away to tend to it’s other customers, clinking his beer bottle against Nick’s in a toast.

“Friendly character,” Nick noted wryly, sipping from the beer and immediately regretting it. Skunky didn’t begin to describe that swill.

“Don’t mind, Chuck,” John swatted him on the back and reached under the bar. He came back up with a thick brown bottle of brandy. “He’s just excited to see ya here.”

“I could tell,” Nick snorted and threw his thumb over a shoulder towards the cowboys. “You running a costume party or these guys just part of Goodneighbor’s new look?”

“Ah, don’t mind them,” Hancock waved a hand dismissively, gesturing for Nick to sit beside him at the bar. “Crimson Trail Caravan’s in town is all. They’ll party here for a night or two and then head up to Diamond City for the week.”

“Never thought I’d see a cowboy in Boston,” Nick eyed a pair of rough looking characters in ten gallon hats and neckerchiefs. “Must be the end of the world.”

“Don’t let their getups fool you,” Hancock warned playfully, sloshing a good amount of brandy into what Nick hoped were a clean set of glasses. “Never saw a tougher group of thugs runnin’ trade before. Can’t even imagine the shit they travel through.”

“I take it they’re not from around here,” Nick said, taking the brandy and saluting Hancock before he put a sip away. It wasn’t nearly as foul as the beer. “Piper’s little sister was telling me about some kinda summer caravan awhile back. They the folks up from that Capital Wasteland place?”

Hancock nodded, emptying his glass and refilling it.

“They camp there before heading to the Commonwealth,” he informed Nick. “But it ain’t their homebase...the Captial’s just another stop on their circuit. Word on the street is, they come from somewhere far to the _West_. Dunno if I’d believe that shit or not, but the stuff they bring ain’t anything you’ll find local.”

“What kinda stuff?” the Detective asked, trying to imagine how far West someone might have to travel to see cowboy getups like that; pre or post war. He hadn’t traveled much in the old days, not outside the Northeast, at least. The only spurs he could remember seeing were the ones on television show heroes.

“The usual trader fair,” Hancock shrugged. “Guns, chems, scrap...but a lotta old world shit, too. Hard to find kit and the like. Got a bottle of somethin’ or other they trade on their route. Couldn’t tell ya what it was supposed to taste like, but it bit a lot harder than Nuka Cola. They’ll take caps for their crap, but trade’ll get you a helluva lot more for your time.”

“You don’t sound too impressed,” Nick noted with amusment.

“Don’t think the shit they cart in s’worth half the trouble they cause while they’re in town,” John snorted. “Fahrenheit thinks it’s good for the people, but me? I gotta play the Mayoral hand kinda serious-like when one of there’s starts throwin’ his weight around.”

“Heavy is the head that wears the crown, eh?” Nick smirked.

“Brother, you have no idea,” John shook his head and downed his glass of brandy. “Shit gives me a headache. Ain’t even worth takin’ a, heh, tour round town with ‘em. You should see the fucked up stuff some of ‘em are into...and that’s comin’ from _me_! Hell, can’t even sit in my own VIP room on account of these assholes stinkin’ the place up.”

“It’s your bar, isn’t it?” Nick asked. “Why not throw ‘em out?”

“Nah,” Hancock gestured flippantly. “They’ll pay a shit load of caps to have the run of the place. Good revenue for the town and all that garbage.”

“The sacrifices you’ve gotta make as a public official,” Nick shook his head mockingly, pouring John another glass of the brandy.

“I know, right?” the Mayor agreed. “It’s fucked up what I put up with for my own.”

A member of the neighborhood watch caught Nick’s eye, nodding towards Hancock.

“Speaking of which...I, uh, think one of your boys might need you there, John,” he murmured to Hancock through the noise.

Hancock sighed and threw back his brandy. As he stood, Nick didn’t miss the sawed off shotgun barely hidden beneath his red coat.

“Duty calls,” he moaned. “Be back in a few.”

Nick chuckled as his friend wove through the crowd with an equal mixture of familiar greetings and snarling demands to move out of his way. Fishing through his pockets, the detective retrieved a cigarette and turned back to his drink, just in time to see a woman with dishwater blond hair and a dress that would’ve covered more had it been painted on, slide into Hancock’s vacated seat.

“Haven’t seen a piece like you around here before,” she cooed, coyly fingering the empty glass John had left behind. “New to Goodneighbor?”

Her perfume was as cloying as her pick-up lines.

“Somethin’ like that, yeah,” he set the smoke between his lips, feigning disinterest as he searched his trench coat for his lighter.

“That’s a _filthy_ habit, y’know,” she tittered, leaning closer.

“So’s makin’ eyes at married men,” he told her off coolly, giving her the acerbic look that once had sent guys twice his size running.

The Blond was a determined bit of skirt, though, and if she thought he was serious about being hitched, she didn’t care. Nick’s earlier confidence was quickly being consumed with the awkwardness of being caught alone in a strange dive by one of the local harpies. He regretted not offering to lend John a hand with whatever trouble the Neighborhood Watch had pulled him out to deal with. 

“There’s somethin’ mysterious about you, Stranger,” she prattled on, closing the distance between them. That giggle of hers was shrill enough to wake the dead. “I can tell.”

“Not me,” Nick was nervously patting down the front of his trench coat now, desperate for that damned lighter. “I’m an open book.”

“And what do those pages of yours _say_?” she batted her eyes; fingers toying with the edge of his sleeve.

They’d be sharing a seat if she got any closer.

Nick turned to tell her so, when a silver-plated lighter flicked open and its flame jumped up between himself and the Blond. The flirtatious woman startled and pulled back; as if burned.

“They’d say, ‘Sorry, Bridget, this one’s spoken for,” Nora’s voice cut through the crowd; smoke deep and resonate in her throat.

Nick felt relief wash over him with the familiar feeling of her pressing gracefully into his side. He casually lit his cigarette in her proffered flame.

“S-sorry, Nora,” the Blond Bridget vacated the stool immediately. “Didn’t realize he was your fella.

“It’s the haircut,” Nora offered smoothly.

“Y-yeah,” Bridget gave a chirping little noise that might have been a laugh. “Must be.”

Nick watched the frightened little bird fly away into the crowd, already in search of her next target. He turned to say something smart to Nora, when his jaw just about fell to the ground.

He’d never need to wonder what she looked like in one of those slick pencil skirts that had been all the rage with the lady lawyers back in the day. Not anymore.

She’d traded threads sometime after he’d left her at Daisy’s; her Third Rail Special, he realized too late. As garments went, it was a far cry from the old world sparkle of sequins and glitter stalking the room, but it was no less enticing. The thin white t-shirt of her everyday attire had been ditched for a sleeveless, clinging number; black. Even with the tank straps and a modest sweetheart neckline, the amount of pale skin on display below the silver of his ring at her neck was scandalous in Nick’s eyes. The skirt was just as dark as her blouse, fitted and falling just above her knees with a peekaboo slit cut up one side to make sitting down less of a production; that is, until she actually sat down in the empty seat beside him and he caught more than a glimpse of the hook and lace combo holding up her sheer black stockings. The whole thing ended in a pair of old, though still smart looking kitten heels, that added all of an inch to her small frame. They were deadly, nonetheless.

Nick swallowed hard and made the mistake of letting his gaze travel back up. Her hair was neatly curled in bedroom soft waves and she wore a pair of sweet cateye glasses in the same night black as the rest of her attire. Her lips, though...

Her lips were slicked bright red.

She slid the cigarette out of his mouth before it dropped to the floor; taking a long smooth drag and letting his smoke curl out of her lungs in slow exhalation. She left her rose mark on the filter as she leaned into him.

“Hey, Valentine,” her love song was a teasing nightingale's call; a Midnight tune that drifted through the jazz club late after the ink and paint club members had flown home to bed. “Need a bodyguard?”

“Yes, please,” Nick breathed, following her forward. His hand came to rest on one stocking clad knee and his fingers splayed shamelessly against the material as he fought to keep them from pushing upward.

“Whoa, _Sunshine_ ,” John Hancock's appreciative whistle snapped the tension of their moment. Nick pulled back sharply in realization; she’d burned him good. “Haven’t seen the Third Rail Special in a while. You on Railroad business tonight?”

It was an old grift that Deacon and Nora had played over the years: The Third Rail Special. He’d put together the disguise for her himself, minus the saucy red wig he’d made her wear with it. Together, they’d get kitted up with the clothes they stashed at Daisy’s place, and make their way solo from each other to the club. Nora would talk their mark up for information, playing the Diamond City out-of-towner looking for a good time in Goodneighbor. Deacon would keep a low profile nearby, listening in as the two communicated like they always did; through subtle gesture and expression. When the job was done and she needed an out, Deacon would roll in with some sort of ridiculous pick-up line and the two would spend the night at the Rexford, playing cards and eating snack cakes and writing up the information the Railroad would need in their notebooks. 

Once, and only once, Deacon hadn’t been able to intercept the lout she’d been talking to before he’d grabbed her wrist and started dragging her towards the stairs. She’d been in the process of snagging her 10mm from under her skirt when John appeared and whisked her away under the pretense of always having had a thing for a redhead in glasses.

The snack cake and poker party had been moved up to his office that night, and the Third Rail Special had been retired the next morning.

Daisy had held onto her disguise in the bottom drawer of her bedroom, however, and Nora had fished the outfit out of retirement for one more glorious evening.

Nora smiled brightly, all pretense of the seductress gone behind the glasses and the girl from Diamond City back in place. 

“No business tonight,” Nora said with a coy wink.

“It’s all business if you know how to make the transaction,” John laughed, giving her a lascivious smirk before turning to the flustered detective at her side. “Better watch this one, Nick. She’ll take you for all you’re worth.”

“Let’s hope so,” he cleared his throat, reaching for the rest of his brandy.

The trio spent the night carousing and re-hashing old war stories; John regaling them with his tales of heroism that final fated night of the Third Rail Special and Nick laughing along, all the while storming hot over the idea of anyone setting their hands on his girl in that getup, let alone getting an eyeful. Magnolia kept the crowd entertained with her jazzy music while Nora turned down several suggestive offers from men and women hoping to take a spin with her, until John pulled her up and into his arms, spinning her inelegantly around the small dance floor and they both had to sit back down from laughing. 

When Mags went up from a break for a new set, and began a damn good take on Ella Fitzgerald’s _Love you Madly_ , Nick didn’t miss the way Nora’s eyes lit up at the familiar tune. She wasn’t laughing as he tugged her close and led her across the floor, the many days and weeks they’d spent dancing together to records in the evening at Home Plate giving them a grace and ease in their steps that was so foreign a sight in its old world elegance to the people of the Commonwealth, that halfway through, they’d quelled the majority of the rowdy crowd and received a small round of applause for their efforts when the music had finished.

As the hour grew late and the club began to empty out, they talked on more serious subjects together over a shared bottle of rye. John spoke of his treatments and Nora talked about seeing Nick-as-he-used-to-be and all the while, Nick-as-he-was-in-the-bar got a queer sort of spark in the back of his neck that itched at him through the pleasant haze of rye, until it became a scratch he couldn’t ignore anymore. It was a familiar feeling; not one born of lost memories, but one born in the old world, when he’d been a detective and a damn good one at that. 

As they sat on a pair of small couches, Nora and John living it up, Nick casually glanced around the room, feigning a disinterested buzz. At first, he thought it was just paranoia, and then, he thought it was just the growing amount of space in the room, leaving him feeling suddenly exposed without the previous flood of people it contained. The longer he sat there though, the more he was sure of it.

Someone was _watching_ them.

It wasn’t until Magnolia retired for the night that he saw the man; the orange bud of his cigarette catching Nick’s eye as the flash of Goodneighbor’s songbird and her red dress walked by. In the very back, hidden partially behind a grated fence by the stage, sat a stranger in the shadows of the club. Though Nick couldn’t make him out with any clarity, he was certain the man was watching their little group and he casually unbuttoned his trench coat, preferring to risk losing a bit of his dignity over the safety of his wife and John. He leaned back, throwing an arm around Nora and letting the hilt of his pistol show where it sat beneath his arm. 

As night turned to early morning and the group had worked their way through another bottle of whiskey together, John informed them that the Rexford was booked solid for the weekend with the Caravan in town, much to his dismay, as citizens complained to him about their favorite flop house being overrun. He offered them a luxurious overnight stay on one of his fine couches, winking at Nick as he slyly added they were more than wide enough for more than just sleeping on.

Polishing off his last glass, Hancock declared himself well and truly tanked, before stumbling to his feet and proposing he show them to their accommodations for the night before he took a puff of Jet and passed the fuck out until morning.

Nick helped Nora up, slipping an arm around her waist to steady her in the little heels as she laughed deeply at her own shaking legs; stiff from so many hours out of use. When he offered her his trench coat, Nora told him in no uncertain terms he could find another way to keep her warm once they were safely ensconced in Hancock’s office for the evening. 

They made their way to say goodnight to Whitechapel Charlie and thank him for the good times, when Nick noticed the man behind the grated fence had disappeared. Whatever he’d wanted, he’d left them alone. More the better considering Nick had indulged more than he’d meant to in the company of his nearest and dearest. He was a damn good shot, but under the influence of that much hooch, he wasn’t sure if he’d be fast enough to catch anyone between their eyes tonight.

“We’re headed out, Chuck!” Hancock crowed, slapping his mottled hand down upon the counter top and grinning like an idiot. “Another good night in my favorite place in the Commonwealth!”

“You flatter me, Mayor Hancock,” the old bot preened. “See you next time, ay?”

“Take it easy, Charlie,” Nora gave him a small wave as Nick tipped his hat in the Mister Handy’s direction.

“Oi! Waitaminute,” Whitechapel Charlie called after them. “One of the customers left somethin’ for you, Little Bird.”

From her place under Nick’s arm, Nora looked confused and a little incredulous at the idea.

“What is it?” she chuckled. “Please tell me it’s not another drink.”

“Lucky for you then, it ain’t that,” Charlie gave a metallic little chuckle before popping a cap on the counter. “Don’t rightly know what it is, to be honest. Ain’t never seen one like that before.”

The bar-robot may never have seen a cap like the one he’d placed on the countertop, but one thing was for certain in that moment: Nora _had_.

Nick watched as the buzz she’d been nursing all night fell away from her eyes and she stared with some trepidation at the little cap, even as she lifted it in her fingers. She stood there so long just examining it that Nick startled her when he returned to her side. In that instant, when she looked at him, there was something like disbelief in her eyes; before the corners of her lips pulled up into a wide grin. The kind of grin people wear when they realize something silly. The kind of grin that held more than a hint of relief in its pull.

Nick returned the look, holding out his hand. He was curious to see what had her so riled up just a moment before. She passed it to him without hesitation and Nick held the single cap up to the light. In truth, it _was_ just a bottle cap. Not a mine. Not a bullet. Not even a misplaced chem.

Even so, Nick had never seen a cap quite like this before. The only identifying marker of the brand was a bright blue star that seemed to glow, whether it was in the light or not. Frowning, he turned the cap over. On the underside of the aluminum, the number “111” had been written in some sort of pen or marker. 

That had been the number he’d seen on that Vault suit in his dreams. The number of Nora’s Vault.

“What is it?” he turned towards her now, moving to hand it back to her. She closed her hands over his own, still wearing that strange, but happy little smile; refusing to take it back.

“Just a wager I won,” she said softly.

“Oh, yeah?” he quirked a brow at her as his lip twitched in amusement. “Win anything good?”

For a moment, she just looked at him.

For a moment, she didn’t say anything.

“I think so,” she murmured.

“What are ya still standin’ around for?” Hancock called to them from the stairs. “I’m drunk and the Jet is callin’ to me. Move your asses!”

Nora slid her arm through Nick’s, resting her head against his shoulder before pulling him in the direction of the Mayor. Nick slid the little star cap into his pocket and forgot about it.

“You’re a big huffy baby when you get like this,” she teased Hancock, poking him in the cheek before sliding her free arm through the ghoul’s.

“I’m the dignified leader of a free city, Sunshine!” he proclaimed, indignance written across his ruined features. “Never huff unless it gets me real nice and high.”

“Get upstairs and we’ll get some Jet into you before bed,” Nora tugged him along.

“That right there?” John purred contently, leaning far over to rest his head upon hers. “That’s why you’re my favorite.”

“You only like me because I feed you chems,” Nora laughed, shoving him off before he lost his hat.

“It’s not just the chems, kitten,” he cuddled right back up to her again; his tall frame looming over hers in a ridiculous manner. “It’s the booze, too.”

By the time they made it out of the Third Rail and back into the street, the few citizens remaining on their feet with any sort of stability were the members of the Neighborhood Watch and K.L.E.O, who John informed them in a loud whisper spent her evening hours engaged in knitting little gun cozies for the pistols she sold.

With quite a bit of effort, they got Hancock up the many stairs to his bedroom, opposite the office, and down onto the mattress of the old wooden bedframe. He’d barely put the inhaler of Jet to his back down after a puff, before he kissed them both soundly and sloppily goodnight; and fell asleep. Nick was still wiping his mouth dry as Nora laughed and set John’s tricorne at one end of the bed, while placing the shotgun that had been hidden under his coat, into a little nook in the bed frame.

“How’s that for a night to remember, Mister Valentine?” Nora teased, leading him into the office before locking the doors behind her. “You even got the Mayor’s seal of approval.”

“Thought he was supposed to be good at that kind of thing,” Nick pulled a face, sticking out his tongue for good measure.

“I don’t think it’s fair to judge his skills when he’s that far gone,” Nora slid out of her heels and stumbled into Nick’s waiting embrace. “I think he did most of the damage to that last bottle of rye himself.”

“True,” Nick conceded. “Even so, I’m probably biased.”

“Oh?” she said coyly, urging him slowly towards the bigger of the two couches. “Why’s that?”

“Because once you’ve kissed an angel,” he murmured, closing the distance between them. “There’s no going back from that kinda Heaven.”

“You’re a shameless flirt, Nick Valentine,” she smiled against his lips.

“Says the woman who came at me with these tonight,” he gasped against her mouth, letting his hands run freely up the length of her stockings to tug at her garters. “Always had a thing for these little clips.”

“Ever made love to a woman in garters?” she inquired, breathing in his air.

“C-can’t say that I have,” he groaned as her tongue swept firmly against his own. “Know any who might be interested?”

“Lucky you, I might,” Nora purred, slipping onto the couch and pulling him down on top of herself by the length of his tie. “ _And_ she happens to be a good friend of mine.”

“Think you could introduce us?” he panted, forgoing taking off anything in favor of working free his belt from the buckle.

“I think it could be arranged,” she laughed softly, unhooking a hidden clasp at the slit on her thigh and freeing the length of her leg up to her hip in the material.

“That’s a handy trick,” he noted appreciatively, soaking in the appearance of her creamy thighs and silken feeling of the stockings as he ran his hands up them to her satin bracers.

“It gets better,” she said in a breathy, suggestive tone. As she spread her legs beneath him, Nick traced the length of black ribbon up her legs to the belt of matching lace holding them up at her hips. There wasn’t any other clothing hiding under that skirt tonight.

He shuddered.

“Tell me that’s not how you used to wear them to the courthouse,” he groaned, yanking the front of his trousers open and shoving them down just far enough to free himself. 

“Why?” she grabbed hold of his tie again, drawing him down to her. “Afraid that’s how I won my cases?”

“Scandalous,” he moaned, sinking himself to the hilt in her wet heat. His hips began to thrust in an awkward jerking excitement before he’d even had time to settle in. “Hell, Nora—you’re always so goddamned tight!” 

“Thought you were into that,” she panted, wrapping her legs around his hips under the trench coat.

“I’m in pretty deep right now, Barrister,” he tried to laugh, though it was ruined by the clear strain of need in his tone.

“Go _deeper_ , Detective,” she gasped, rolling her weight onto her shoulders and freeing her hips to give him better access.

“Oh, god, Nora,” he huffed, pulling her further into his hips with each slap of their skin. “I’m...I’m not gonna last like this…”

“Harder, Nick,” she begged, arching into him with every thrust. “Please…”

“Fuck, Doll,” he gasped, pumping viciously against her as his fingers slid under the lace of her belt. “You’re gonna make me…”

“Yes! God, right there!” she breathed.

He broke first in their frenzied coupling, gripping the armrest of the tattered couch with one hand, while his other slipped behind the curve of her hip. He drove himself again and again between the apex of her thighs, begging her for mercy as he rode her long after he’d spilled every drop of his completion. Nora writhed beneath him as she hit her peak, tugging his mouth to hers as they rolled their hips together mindlessly after hours spent everywhere but locked together, limbs entangled like they wanted to be. Both were long since spent and boneless by the time the broke away for air and slowly, as they gasped breath after breath to fill their lungs, they came to a shaking stop. 

Nick stayed buried within her, running his lips over hers and his hands wantonly down the smooth stockings covering her legs. He was still running on high as she lay enervated beneath him and the safety of his trench coat; Nick’s hips giving shallow thrusts in lazy intervals as his body craved to maintain their connection.

At some point, the both collapsed in a fit of exhausted laughter, separating mouths and bodies just long enough to straighten themselves back out again for public decency in the morning. Nick retrieved the grey blanket they’d carried with them to Goodneighbor, tucking it around them as she curled in beneath his arm.

In the quiet that settled over them afterwards, Nick suddenly chuckled.

“Can’t believe we just did that on John’s couch,” he said, feeling giddy with the need to sleep and glad for the darkness of the room that was surely hiding his blush.

“It’s seen far worse in it’s time, I’m sure,” Nora laughed in quiet amusement.

“Guess we can add another notch to its belt then,” he noted wryly. “Surprised we even made it this far… been waiting to do that all day...almost bent you over the railing out there.”

“I wouldn’t have said no,” she chuckled softly beside his ear, sending tremors dancing through the layers of Nick’s skin.

“Looks like we’ll, ah,” he coughed, trying not to think about fucking his wife in the moonlight of a very public section of the Old State House and the inticing rush of heat that flushed him with. “We’ll have to have you try the trench coat on another time.”

“Among other things,” she noted, the impish look on her features tempered by sleepiness.

Nick could relate.

“Jesus, you wore me out,” he sighed, feeling the pleasant strain of his muscles as they begged for rest. “Feel like I could sleep for another 200 years after that.”

“Don’t you dare,” she held tightly to him and though she said it playfully, there was an edge to her voice that was just a little bit too raw to be entirely joking. “We stick together from now on, remember?”

“Then sleep with me, Sweetheart,” he yawned and pressed a kiss to her hair. “And tomorrow, we’ll head for home.”

She was quiet a moment; a stiff little shiver running just beneath his fingertips as he worked calming circles against her skin.

“Sorry,” he breathed, gathering her to him tightly. “Did I say something?”

She shook her head, pressing long kisses to the shirt covering his chest in reassurance.

“No, it’s just...We made a promise to meet there, you know?” she whispered, the wistfulness that had been peeking through her veneer all day returning. “That morning when...that morning in the street.”

She slid up where she could look at him and he slipped off her cat-eye glasses, tossing them aside so he could look at her in return.

“I know you’re right here, Nick. I _know_ that; I _feel_ it every time I’m lying there beside you, just taking in your air,” she stroked the stubble along his jaw with gentle fingers, eyes transfixed as she looked at him. “You’re right here beneath my fingertips and I know that, but…”

The look she wore just then was so heartbreaking, Nick felt the need to wrap up the glass in that glance before it shattered.

“Sometimes it feels like we’ll never get back home again,” she swallowed hard as her smoke wavered. “Like someday I’ll wake up in that street and realize I didn’t save you at all...that I didn’t survive the chems...that you’ll...that you’ll go someplace I can’t see you.”

Nick pulled her fully against him, tangling his fingers into the silk of her hair and kissing her like life itself depended on that one act. He kissed her with every bit of passion he held for her in his heart. He kissed her with all the love both pieces of himself held for her. He kissed her; desperate to reassure her that he wouldn’t end up on that table in HQ again; out of sight; out of reach. She wasn’t on that street anymore and neither was he; and he’d spend a lifetime kissing her until that fear could hold no more sway over her.

“You saved me, Doll,” he breathed against her lips. “We made it out, together. Just...took a detour on the road home is all. Can’t help it the way you get me going.”

She laughed, running her tongue along his bottom lip as she swallowed down his air. While they reassured each other that they were both still whole and living, Nick felt like they’d never closed the distance between them as much as they had tonight. They could live and love and make new memories without the pieces of each other that they’d lost, but knowing there was a way now that he could be whole again; whole in a way no Nick Valentine had ever been before, that made him want the full picture. It wasn’t fear or despair or self-doubt driving him to regain his memories now, not like when he’d first woken in this world and wanted to live in another man’s shoes. 

No. Nick didn’t want anyone else’s life now, but his _own_ ; and selfish as it may be, he wanted _all_ of it. Every memory, every feeling; every _moment_ he’d ever spent with the woman who loved him no matter how he came packaged to her. They’d made some kind of a promise on that street; a _date_ his other self had said in that dream. They’d made a date to meet at seven; and Nick had every intention of keeping that appointment, even if his clock was running a bit slow. He wanted to go home again with her. The way they’d been desperate to; when they were together, that morning on the street.

“We’ll get there, Nora,” he promised her. “Someday, I’ll meet you back there. All of me, I swear it.”

Nick kissed her one last time; grey eyes stuck in her blue.

“At seven,” he murmured.

“Hey, Valentine,” her love song was a shy sonnet, whispering in the moonlight below his balcony. 

“Can I do somethin’ for you?” he asked, enraptured.

“Don’t forget the flowers,” she said softly.

And though Nick wasn’t sure what she meant, in that moment, a feeling arose so strong and so painful in his chest, that he knew some part of him did.

And that thought alone made him ridiculously happy.

“It’s a date,” he tightened his hold on her, a yawn rumbling through his chest as sleep demanded his presence. “Promise...I’ll be there with bells on.”

He felt her gentle kiss against his jaw, even as he drifted away from her, his mind sinking into night with the comfort of her body beside his.

Nick slept.

When he woke up some time later, he found himself staring at a warm-wood ceiling fan, lazily spinning from its place above him, in a sunny-yellow room he’d never seen before.

The air was thick with the scent of coffee and roses.

Nick sat up on the mid-century styled couch he’d been laying on.

The man who greeted him from the balcony behind the couch still had yellow eyes.

But the metal claw he’d once had for a hand was gone now, as were the many tatters that had once graced his synthetic skin. Nick thought he looked factory new.

Nick thought; he looked almost _human_.


	34. She was Starlight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sure when the next update will be, but I'll try hard not to let too long go by! We're getting there!
> 
> Thank you again for all the lovely comments! I've been reading them all week as I've been working. <3

Nick gaped at his counterpart.

“You gonna say something?” the other Nick chuckled, stepping into the apartment and casually flipping the wistful voice of Doris Day murmuring from the record player to a happier piece of vinyl. “Or you just lookin’ to catch flies with that mouth?”

“You..,” Nick said in awe, standing quickly and gesturing at the changes in his near reflection. “You…you look _different_!” 

“That obvious?” he laughed softly; hands slipping into his pockets and head shaking. He seemed relieved, even as his whole countenance seemed more relaxed and at ease than the last time Nick had seen him. “Then it’s not just me. You see it, too.”

“Of course I can see it!” Nick rounded the couch in excitement, unable to contain himself as he carefully touched the other man’s perfect cheek. If his sudden lack of manners bothered the other Nick, he didn’t show it. “Hell, anyone with eyes would notice this! What happened?”

“I don’t know,” the man with the yellow eyes beamed in equal enthusiasm. “After Nora left, I...I had this crazy dream and I woke up on the couch like this.”

He ran his hands down the front of his shirt, still enthralled by the smooth and perfect panels of his chest underneath the cotton.

“Can’t even remember a time when I looked this good,” he murmured happily. “Been dinged up for years, and now… _this_. I don’t know what caused it, but seeing Nora again...being here instead of in that old room of ours...it’s changing me.”

As astonishing as those changes were, the synthetic Nick’s comments brought up some other questions.

“Hey, speaking of that,” Nick glanced around the brightly lit rooms. He’d never seen this place before. In all honestly; it was lovely. “Where is _here_ anyway?”

A look crossed the other Nick’s face just then. A look that was open and at peace. A look that contained more than just a dose of wishful longing in its features.

A look that was most definitely one of love.

“It’s Nora’s old place,” he breathed, the sonorous dip in his voice ardent in its adoration of the words. “From back before the bombs. From before she met Nate.”

From _before_ she met Nate.

Nick stilled as the man’s words sunk in. As he looked at the apartment now, he did so with equal parts devout admiration and a melancholy twinge of regret. It was the kind of place he’d have loved to live in. The kind of of place he’d have loved to live in with a girl who was his and his alone.

It was the kind of place he _might_ have lived in, if he hadn’t talked himself out of calling up Buster Connolly’s little sister back in the day, when the newspaper man had given Nick her number and the name of a book to read. The name of a book he’d thought Nick might like. The name of a book he’d given a copy of to his sister.

The name of a book that would have given a reclusive detective named Nick Valentine a reason to chat up a lonely lawyer named Nora Connolly.

God, he’d been such a fool.

A bellowing, deep horn announced itself from somewhere in the distance, and Nick’s eyes went wide in recognition. He tore out onto the balcony, the other Nick following closely at his heels. 

“Hey, you alright?” he asked, watching Nick in confusion as the horn echoed quietly again. “What’s with all the rush?”

“That’s the noon time ferry,” Nick breathed.

“Guess it ran on a cleaner schedule back in the day,” the other Nick chuckled beside him. The damn ferry was probably washed up on the shores of Boston somewhere now, never to sound off at noon again.

“No, you don’t understand,” Nick shook his head. His voice was barely a whisper now. “I could hear it like that from the apartment down on Munroe and Third.”

Nick looked down over the iron railing of the balcony, grey eyes racing over the neat brownstone houses and brick apartment rises. There were trees and flowers everywhere and just beyond the rooftops across from Nora’s apartment, he could see the large, green expanse of a riverfront park. He _knew_ that park.

“We’re down by Charles River Square..,” he gave a short bark of a laugh on the back of an exhalation of air; the look on his face dumbfounded in realization. “All this time...she was right across the river from us.”

He settled into a nervous sobriety as the sting of tears threatened his eyes.

“ _God_ ,” he breathed. “She was right across the river.”

Looking back, Nick cringed at the sheer number of hours, weeks and years he’d wasted; at how he’d spent so much time thinking the girl he wanted was too far from his reach. He thought now about how different his life before the bombs might have been, if he’d just picked up the phone and dared to try for her.

He’d always assumed there were just some things that he’d never be the type of guy to know. Nick wasn’t so much a fool that he hadn’t caught on to what Buster was trying to do at the bar; handing him that bourbon stained napkin with her number. It’d been a nice dream to consider when he’d been sitting in the shadows of his old bay window on Sunday mornings; that somewhere out there, there might be someone he could connect with in ways that went beyond acquaintances and nice dinner dates. Someone that would light up his rooms and fill his heart with something akin to the passion he’d only read about in his books. Someone that laughed at his bad jokes and drank coffee in the evenings and who might invite his touch in the dark and still love him when morning came.

He could remember being so certain back then that _that_ sort of life would always be a dream for him. He’d kept that napkin tucked in his wallet; still had it there 200 years and some change later; as a reminder that somewhere out there; someday...he might find a way to make that dream into a reality. Nick had never called her though; returning that little scrap of napkin to it’s place between his billfolds each time he’d considered it. He’d been so sure it was a life he’d never have. A life he couldn’t reach.

And all this time, she’d been right across the river.

“Helluva thing, I suppose, but...she’s lying next to us somewhere right now,” the other Nick offered quietly, both men staring off into the distance beyond the green park. “I can feel her there, tucked into my side...even if I can’t see that I’m holding onto her yet.”

The man with the yellow eyes patted Nick’s shoulder.

“Don’t have a river to worry about anymore,” his lips quirked up into a lopsided smile.

“Guess that’s true,” Nick laughed, the knowledge that Nora was still pressed against him on John’s couch for the night taking away some of the ache that lingered in his chest. “Even so...can’t help thinking now, that if I hadn’t been so afraid of playing the numbers at the time...I could have taken Buster’s advice and called his sister up to talk about a book.”

The other Nick looked at him for a long moment, his brow furrowing.

“So we really _did_ know her brother..,” his words came slowly, as if he hadn’t fully believed them before. “The Nora in my dream the other night mentioned something about it, but...I couldn’t remember him.”

“The Nora in your dream?” Nick asked.

“Damndest thing,” the other Nick shook his head. “After Nora...after she left and Amari fixed it so I’d be camping out here, I fell asleep on the couch. Didn’t know I was dreaming at first when I saw her sitting there, but she said something about being home and we were in front of a house I didn’t recognize. Realized it wasn’t really her...just the memories of her talking to me.”

“What’d she say?” Nick lipped his lips nervously. 

“Just that she’d been waiting for me...and that the answer was staring us right in the face, somehow,” Nick sighed, a thoughtful look crossing his features. “She was reading some kinda book that her brother had given her when I found her under that tree.”

“A wisteria tree?” Nick blurted out in excitement.

“Come to think of it, yeah,” the other Nick nodded. “She was sittin’ in a little garden under a wisteria tree. Biggest damned roses there I’ve ever seen, too. Why? That mean something to you?”

“It’s where we first met her!” Nick exclaimed with a whoop of joy. “Those are my memories you were...well, _ours_ , I mean, just not the ones you remember yet.”

“Hold on,” the man with the yellow eyes shook his head. “We met Nora down in Vault 114 when she pulled us outta Skinny Malone’s clink. You said it yourself the last time you were here...we stood together under the starlight in the rain.”

“I said it was her favorite _story_ ,” Nick winked. “It’s the story of how we met _again_ in the Commonwealth, but the _first_ time...it was in the house under that wisteria tree.”

Nick’s brows furrowed this time.

“...it was at her brother’s funeral,” he added quietly.

Silence fell between them for a while; Nick remembering, while the other Nick processed the information at hand.

“So, I didn’t meet her first,” the other Nick finally said, a tinge of melancholy coloring his words.

“It’s not how _we_ first met her, no,” Nick clasped his hand on his reflection’s shoulder. “But if you want to look at it that way, then... _you_ were the first one she fell in love with.”

“Same man,” the other Nick shook his head, voicing that fact in a much brighter tone. He threw an arm around Nick’s shoulders and guided him back inside. “Comon’ let’s grab some coffee. Think it’s about time we traded hands. Might help us to solve this whole sunlight business if we know all the cards we’re playing with.”

A couple of hours and a pot of coffee later, the pair had traded every story they could think of that might have something to do with the riddle. Despite knowing a bit more of the lives they were each missing; they weren’t any closer to solving the case.

“Nice as this is,” Nick sighed from his place on the couch. “It’s not really getting us anywhere, is it?”

“So let’s go back to the evidence,” the other Nick proposed, pacing the room in short circuits. His eyes drifted to that little glass slipper still waiting for him on the coffee table, and the Doris Day song he’d been playing non-stop since Nora had left his side. “Look for the commonalities.”

“Helluva lot to sift through,” Nick shook his head and reached for the warmth of his coffee mug. “A pair of lifetimes and 200 years between us. Where do we even start?”

“No,” the other Nick shook his head. “This has to do with us and Nora. That limits the timeframe.”

“Still a couple of years in your basket,” Nick said wryly, sipping from his coffee.

“But only a couple of months and a day in yours,” the other Nick rounded suddenly and stopped pacing. “That narrows the field quite a bit for us.”

He snapped the fingers of a perfect hand as a thought struck him, and went to the bookcases, retrieving a tall, grey linen hardcover from the shelf.

“What’s that?” Nick asked, curious.

“Nora’s memories of us,” the other Nick flipped through the volume. “Or more specifically, of you.”

“No foolin’?” Nick asked as the man with the yellow eyes passed him the volume.

“Looks like our sweet and clever girl is still trying to partner up with us on this one,” the other Nick said with a soft smile. “Left us a whole catalogue of every memory she’s got between us.”

Nick stared down at the grey linen book in his hands. His name stood out proudly in unabashed yellow, under which the cupid’s heart from the office sign was embossed with the same glossy ink. For a moment, he felt like a cad for what he was about to do. These were her thoughts; her _private_ thoughts, and even if she had left them behind to aid in their investigation, it still felt like he was cracking open her diary. His conscience couldn’t compete with his curiosity on this one, however, and the sudden desperation to know what might be written about himself in that innocuous little volume was overwhelming.

The other Nick busied himself making another pot of coffee while Nick thumbed through the grey hardcover. 

A blush began to heat his cheeks while he skimmed through some of the passages of memory written about himself in the pages. There was no innuendo in the words of Nora’s book; it was a clear and beautiful love letter starting from that first moment she’d seen him walking into HQ. That afternoon they’d spent on the stairs of the Old North Church, the day she’d had to leave for war, their first kiss; her every waking thought about him was right there and readable. It made his chest ache in that familiar way it had back when he’d first heard her name, and he longed to wake now, if only to tighten his hold on her as she slept. 

Nick knew how she felt about him, both with grey eyes and with yellow, but _this_...reading this…

He’d never dreamed that anyone would ever _think_ these sorts of things about him.

She thought that he was _radiant_ and that made him shine all the brighter as he took in every word of love from her heart in those pages. Nick’s counterpart was right; there was no river between them now.

“You read yours yet?” he murmured, the hitch in his voice thick and cracking the words as his reflection set a new mug of coffee down on the table for him.

“Some of it,” the other Nick admitted quietly, taking up his seat on the other end of the couch. “Figured I’d work my way through them in the evenings when I’m alone. She…”

He looked away, eyes fixed on that glass shoe on the coffee table.

“She’s some kind of _angel_ ,” he choked out.

“Might know that feeling,” Nick offered softly.

His counterpart’s gaze fell towards the floor to mask the cringe crawling into his expression.

“Listen,” he cleared his throat. “If we _can’t_ solve this, if we…”

“Hey now, don’t talk like that,” Nick stood, walking over to his other self and placing the grey book in his matching hands. “It’s not ‘if’ anymore, it’s ‘when’. We know our timeframe now, right? Two months and a day...it’s the beginning of the trail, so let’s start there.”

“Because we always go back the evidence,” the other Nick nodded appreciatively.

“That’s right,” Nick grinned broadly at him before looking around. “We got any pens and paper lying around? Might help to start getting our thoughts to ink.”

“Try the desk in the bedroom,” he pointed towards the second door to their left. He gestured at the little grey book as he cracked it open. “You mind if I..?”

“Go ahead,” Nick nodded, rising and heading towards the door. “Won’t need separate volumes anymore if we can work this out anyway.”

Leaving the other Nick to his reading, Nick made his way into Nora’s bedroom. The desk was in the same warm-colored wood that was scattered throughout the apartment; one of those fancy writing tables with a roll down top and a collection of little drawers along the back rise of it, with a chair that matched. Nick moved towards one of the bigger drawers down the left side that looked big enough to hold paper, pulling it free by the ornate brass handle and finding a stack of unused legal steno pads inside. He smiled as he pulled a pair free, admiring the sharp black and tan covers with the little leaf crest near the bottom. He’d used the same brand back in the day. New Leaf notebooks had cost a bit more than the standard National Brand, but Nick had always preferred their look and feel; the paper inside took ink like a dream and, silly as it was, made it a much more pleasurable experience when he’d had to take notes for the job. It was one of the few luxuries he’d allowed himself back in the day; New Leaf notebooks and a silver-plated fountain pen his father had bought him when he’d made detective. 

He only knew of one shop that had carried the brand in Boston, and it gave him a little thrill now to think she might have bought her books where he did. He wondered if they’d ever been in that shop at the same time, or if they’d ever just missed bumping into one another at the door. 

He wondered how many times chance had tried to bring them together over the years, until the fates had gotten fed up with them after two centuries and sent her after him when he was wearing that other body and cooped up for three weeks down in Vault 114.

Fishing around her other drawers, he found a couple of fountain pens that still wrote with slick black ink, and tucked them into his pocket, along with a tiny blotter. He took note of a neat stack of little envelopes still packed and ready for use in the same drawer; the kind you sent personal writings in to friends and the like. He wondered for a moment if it was a freshly purchased set to replace an old one or if she’d bought them long ago and never had the occasion to use them. He wondered who she’d intended to write to and what sort of letters they might have been.

He wondered if she would have ever written one to him if she’d known he was waiting for her, just across the river.

The edges of Nick’s lips twitched in pleasure at that thought and he closed the drawer; shaking his head. Maybe he hadn’t taken Buster’s advice 200 years and the end of the world ago, but the girl he’d been waiting for was his now; was sleeping beside him on that couch of John Hancock’s; would be heading back to Diamond City and their house at Home Plate in the morning at his side. He might never bump into her at the paper shop down near the bridge, nor receive a letter kissed with her perfume in his evening mail, but he shared a rooftop full of roses with her now, and a bed and an office and a sign with their last name.

His fingers brushed the wood table top as he said goodbye to the little desk, but as Nick made to leave the room, he stopped. 

Nora’s bed lay washed in the afternoon light, its sunny yellow comforter rumpled and pulled back as if someone had just been sleeping in it moments before. The sheets were a cream color, not unlike the dress with the little flower pattern neatly lying beside a tattered trench coat at the foot of the mattress. It was an inviting sort of space; the kind of space he could imagine spending a late morning in with his wife. He wondered if his counterpart had done just that when she’d visited, and, possessive as Nick was when it came to Nora, he found he really hoped that they had.

Leaving the bed undisturbed, he ventured back out of the room to find the other Nick already more than halfway through the grey linen book. The hint of a smile graced his lips from behind the hand trying to hide it.

“Find something amusing?” he asked dryly, tossing his near mirror image one of the pens from his pocket, before depositing the notebooks on the couch between them.

“Just a little surprising is all,” the other Nick shook his head, retrieving a steno pad and setting the hardcover down on the coffee table. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but back when I thought I was just a synth programmed with some pre-war memories...never would have imagined you to be this kinda guy.”

“And what kinda guy is that?” Nick bristled and feigned interest in starting his notes.

“The same kinda guy as me,” the other Nick spoke under an amused little snort. “Dunno how much of it you’ve hashed out with Nora, but, ah, she wasn’t much more experienced than we were by the time we got together. Just Nate and, aheh...me.”

“Oh..,” Nick coughed, feeling the blood rushing to color his ears. “Always thought she might have been more, ah, progressive back in the day...considering how open she is...about _it_.”

The other Nick chuckled.

“Think Nate might’ve helped with some of that,” he shrugged, clearing his throat. “She’s never been shy about, ah, about _it_...but I...I don’t think it was as frequent or as... _impassioned_ before we got together.”

Nick couldn’t help it. He stared in surprise. The other Nick ignored him for his notes.

“Just sayin’. We, ah...we bring it out in each other. Always have,” he swallowed anxiously. “So...so if there’s somethin’ you _want_...just ask her.”

Nick turned away at that, certain without a doubt he was probably red as a tomato.

“I’ll, ah, I’ll keep that in mind,” he tried to say breezily, but the catch in throat gave him away.

“Gotta admit, I never thought of using the handcuffs,” the other Nick shook his head with an abashed little laugh. “Have to revisit that one when we get ourselves sorted again.”

Whatever awkwardness had fallen during their conversation, it ended with them both laughing. The first list they wrote had very little to do with the riddle and a whole lot to do with writing down all the things one or the other of them had yet to experience with their wife that each was determined to remedy, once they were of one mind again.

After they’d written their first list and felt sobered enough to return to the task at hand, both Nicks began sorting out a comprehensive calendar for the last two months, and a single day that happened before the bombs. Every interaction with Nora was cataloged and dissected before the other Nick tried to think of comparisons from his own memories that might be a match.

By the time evening had rolled around, they’d narrowed their observations down even further; beginning to work in the clues the dream Nora had given to each of them when they’d encountered her. Nick had made a fairly strong argument about the _looking backwards_ comment she’d made. He thought it was a metaphor for Nora, herself, on account of it being the title of the book Buster had recommended and on account of the irony of the story itself.

“It’s about a guy who falls asleep for a century or so,” Nick was on his feet and pacing the circuit now as they worked. “He wakes up to find himself in a completely different time in Boston.”

“Sounds like a couple of people we know,” the other Nick noted. “So, we’re always looking for Nora. What about her?”

“Some kind of starting point,” Nick proffered, hands deep in his pockets as he thought. “That’s what the book was, more or less. It was the first time I can remember hearing her name...when Buster and I were out at that bar and he slipped me her number.”

“Hope it’s not that book itself,” the other Nick sighed. “Don’t think it’s one in our collection.”

“It has to be something we’ve both seen,” Nick shook his head. “You said it yourself, the memories of Nora under that tree kept stressing the word, like it was something we’d be looking at. Something physical.”

“Something of Nora’s?” the other Nick pondered, eyes flickering over his notes.

“Or something we associate with her,” Nick shrugged, his fingers playing with the odd little bottle cap in his pocket. “Something of hers that we’d connect to starting our lives.”

He turned and pointed at his counterpart. 

“Anything come to mind from that night she pulled us outta that Vault?”

The other Nick shook his head.

“Nothing she’d still have owned by the time you ran into her,” he leaned back into the couch, letting the breath run out of him. “She didn’t have much outside her Vault suit back then...and she hasn’t worn that blue piece in years.”

“Not something I really think of with her, either,” Nick shook his head.

“To be honest,” the other Nick said quietly. “I think we should stop looking there for answers, anyhow. I might have met her under those stars, but it’s not really where my life started. Just maybe...how I got there.”

“So when did it start?” Nick asked, knowing what a loaded question those four simple words probably were.”

The other Nick was silent for a moment; lost deep in thought. That was the only question that really mattered now, wasn’t it? When had she changed him? When she’d become his partner? When she’d moved to Diamond City? When she’d helped him take out Eddie Winter and put what he’d thought to be Old Nick’s memories to rest?

When she’d shown up at the office two hours after he’d run away from their first date and changed his life with a kiss?

“The night before I married her,” he murmured finally, remembering how much she’d lit up the room when she’d stepped through that door. “Or the morning after, when we tied the knot. What about you?”

Nick thought hard for a moment. He supposed it could be argued his life started again when they’d pulled him out of that freezer in the basement of the C.I.T ruins, but if Nick had to say for certain...his life started sometime when he’d been at HQ. When he’d seen her lying there, in that hospital bed for the first time and realized a woman he couldn’t remember had risked her life for his own. When they’d spent the day out on the steps of the Old North Church and he’d been happier just sitting with her than he’d even been in his entire life. 

Or maybe it was that night in Diamond City, when he’d poured his heart out to her amid the roses on her rooftop, and she’d changed his life with a kiss.

“The night she got back from the war,” he breathed, remembering standing there with her under the stars, the taste of her sweet lips mixing with the rain. “It has to be.”

“Still doesn’t explain the sunlight,” the other Nick grumbled.

“We married her in the morning, though, didn’t we?” Nick asked, hope coloring his tone.

“That’s true, but...it’s odd,” he frowned. “Don’t really think of her with the sun, for all I’ve seen her in it.”

“Why not?” Nick wondered softly.

“Dunno. Maybe we just met more often by evening, but..,” the other Nick’s yellow gaze fell to that little glass shoe on the table; his voice resonant with longing. “For me, she was starlight.”

He capped his fountain pen and set it aside by the notebook.

“You know...I spent so much of my life out there feeling separate from the rest of the world. Just a guy...a _thing_ , really...that was pretending to be human,” he confessed. “She didn’t ever stand for that, though. Always insisted I was more than just a set of memory drives and some fancy wiring.”

The beginnings of a smile tugged at his lips as he thought of her now; of his angel; of his wife.

“She connected me to the rest of the world,” he said softly. “Made me feel like I belonged.”

Nick didn’t need to ask what his counterpart meant by it. He knew what it was to be as empty as the space between stars in the sky. He knew what it meant to have her light cross that distance and to feel a bit closer to the world every moment spent by her side; as if the life he’d always wanted, wasn’t at all out of reach.

“I still think it’s the rings,” Nick shook his head finally, returning to an earlier argument of theirs.

“But she’s missing hers,” the other Nick argued, restlessly turning the circle of silver on his finger in reassurance it was still there.

“Maybe it’s our own then,” Nick proposed. “Maybe it’s a matter of putting it back on again. You said it yourself, you started to change when Nora gave you the ring back while she was here. Maybe...maybe it’s some kinda circuit and I need to close the connection on the other side.”

The other Nick made to comment, but Nick beat him to the punch as his mind began working over the ring idea again.

“It fits what we’re looking for, if you think on it,” he said, a nervous excitement in his voice now. “Your life started when you married her, mine started when I found out I had a wife. It’s..it’s the kind of thing I wanted from her even back at HQ. Maybe...maybe it’s why the sight of that ring used to bother me so much. Maybe I just need to put the damn thing back on.”

“And the sunlight?” the other Nick asked pointedly. “Why do we dream about her in sunlight?”

“Maybe it’s because you married her in the sunlight,” Nick countered. “Maybe it’s because I sat on those steps with her in the afternoon sun and fell in love. Either way, it’s not a bad string to follow.”

The other Nick looked doubtful, even as he wanted to hope.

“What if it’s _not_ the ring?” he said quietly. 

“It has to be,” Nick held onto that hope for both of them. “Look, there _is_ a connection point between where our lives started, no matter how differently they came about. I think...I think our lives really started when Nora became our wife.”

“But what if that doesn't solve it?” the other Nick pressed again. “Or what if it was hers?”

“Then...then I’ll find her a new one first,” Nick gestured broadly, feeling antsy to act. “From both of us, and...and we’ll do the whole wedding over again, start to finish, until something sparks. Until she lights us up again...somehow.”

“Sounds like a long shot,” the other Nick groused.

“Let’s at least try it,” Nick pleaded. “If it fails, then we go back to the notes and give it another go, but if it works…”

He grinned.

“If it works we’ll both be back where we belong,” he finished brightly. “Standing at her side.”

“You’re forgetting one thing,” the other Nick sighed, trying not to let the desire to see Nora again color his reasoning. “Where are you gonna find another ring?”

“I might just have a lead on that,” Nick beamed, taking the odd little cap out of his pocket and tossing it jovially in the air. “There’s a new caravan in town headed to Diamond City and word on the street is that they deal in hard to find goods from the old world. Thought I might try…”

As he went to toss the cap a second time, the other Nick was on his feet and had caught the little piece of aluminium before Nick even registered his motion. He looked at the cap much as Nora had, turning it over and over again in his fingers as if hoping to find something different.

“Where’d you get this?” he murmured; the edge sharp in his tone.

“Some guy left it for Nora in the Third Rail,” Nick shrugged, watching his counterpart carefully. “Didn’t leave a name to go with it though. Why?”

“Did he have a scar through his left eye?” the other Nick demanded. “Did he have a metal arm?”

“I couldn’t tell ya,” Nick said, feeling worry creeping along his veins. “Didn’t get a good look at him, but there was a fella watching us that night. He dangerous?”

“I..,” the other Nick cringed and handed Nick back the cap. “I used to think so.”

“Now’s not the time to clam up on me,” Nick shook his head and placed a reassuring hand on the other man’s shoulder. “He’s not looking to hurt Nora, is he?”

“No, but, if you should see him,” the other Nick looked at him with a grave expression. “Don’t leave her alone with him.”

“ _Now_ , you’re worrying me,” Nick breathed, staring at the little cap with the glowing blue star. “What’s this all about?”

“Nora..,” the other Nick started. “She say anything about that cap?”

“Not really,” Nick admitted slowly. “Just that it was some kinda wager she’d won. Seemed happy about it, honestly.”

That thought seemed to relieve his counterpart of some of the tension in his spine.

“I’m probably getting worked up over nothing,” the other Nick said finally, offering up a half-hearted smile in recompense for his outburst. “If the Crimson Trails Caravan is in town, it must be somewhere near August out there right now.”

“That’s right,” Nick nodded. “Nat said she’d take me around when it showed up from the Capital Wasteland.”

“Got you playing cards already, eh?” the other Nick chuckled. “She’s a good wingman to have with you on this one, though. That kid can barter with the best of ‘em. If there’s a ring to be had there, she’ll find it and make sure they don’t fleece you for it.”

“I’ll be sure to tag along with her, then,” Nick promised, feeling the familiar pull of waking at the edges of his mind. “You...you alright with being here a few more days?”

“Sure, sure,” the other Nick nodded. “Gives me time to think on this crazy scheme of yours. See if I can’t find something a little more solid in the meantime.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Nick chuckled, even as he blinked against the sensation of drifting.

“I want it to work,” the other Nick assured him. “But better to sift through all the evidence again, just in case.”

Nick had just enough time to nod in agreement before he faded from the room, leaving the other Nick, once again, alone. 

“I really hope it works,” Nick, the Nick that was stuck in the apartment, said to the empty air.

The thought of being back out there and living his life before the week was out had him spinning, and the mere prospect of holding Nora again so soon after she’d left him put him over the moon.

Even so...there was that _bottle cap_.

Nick was certain he was overreacting now. He hadn’t seen the tall man with the metal arm in nearly two years, and in the time between, Nora had long since become his wife. Still...he couldn’t shake the feeling of dread creeping through his sensor net when he remembered that last night he’d seen the quiet member of the Crimson Trails Caravan. The night when Nick had seen him manhandling Nora in the shadows before Home Plate when he’d been out for an evening walk.

She’d never mentioned anything about it to Nick, but it’d made things awkward at the office for the entirety of the week after, and she’d flushed every time he asked her if she was feeling alright. He’d been despondent and sore about the whole scene he’d stumbled upon that evening; examined it and dissected it for nearly a month and a half afterwards. 

The man had _kissed_ her.

He’d...he’d run his hands over her Vault suit like he had some kind of right to it and, maybe it was just a trick of Nick’s memory, but he swore even now that Nora had pushed him away. He thought she’d looked...hurt...somehow; she’d been shaking.

It was the only time he’d ever hoped she’d been hurt. That she’d been shaking with anger. It’s what he always told himself in the end to stop his mind racing.

To stop the thought that said the shaking had been a sign of _desire_.

The tall man had laughed afterwards. Low and deep in his throat; already convicted in some sort of victory. He’d tossed her a bottle cap and told her the next time they met they’d see which one of them won the wager, before walking away and leaving Nora watching after him; wild eyed and nervous on her doorstep. She’d escaped into the safety of Home Plate after that; but not before Nick caught a glimpse of that blue star glowing brightly through the darkness.

It’d been a long while since Nick had thought about that man from the West.

He wondered how long it’d been since Nora thought about him.

As that idea crossed his mind, another was quick on it’s heels and Nick’s head jerked in the direction of the bookcase. This...this had nothing to do with the riddle. This had nothing to do with getting out of his own head, which is why he’d left the other books on the shelves alone. He’d only felt validated in reading the ones that came with his name attached, but this...this seemed like a violation of her privacy somehow.

And yet, he needed to _know_.

On quiet feet, Nick made his way to the shelves, as if his crime would somehow be discovered through the sound of his shoes across the wood floor in the empty apartment. He felt the coolant racing through his chest now, even as the irregularity of the flow felt more like a beat these days. Crouching down, he examined the titles far below her nearest and dearest in the Commonwealth, finding smaller, thinner volumes shelved closer together and legion in their number the closer to the floor he looked.

Here, he found magazine sized volumes containing memories of some of the settlers, or the merchants and travelers they encountered on the road. Memories of people from before the war that had been acquaintances and people that had touched her life enough to merit a permanent mark in her mind, even if the words about them were few.

He searched the many volumes for a good half an hour before his fingers found the edge of an old comic book. It’s cover was all black save for a bright blue glowing star in which a single black number was printed: 6.

With shaking hands and unsteady legs, Nick returned to the couch with the comic, staring at it a long while as he sat there, and debating whether he wanted to know the other side of that scene he’d witnessed a summer’s night two years back. He tried to reason that it wouldn’t change anything; Nora was his wife now and he knew that she loved him, even if...even if she may have been...intimate with that stranger for a hot second. He tried to reason that she wasn’t that sort of woman anyway and the chances she’d done anything with that man were low. He tried to reason it wouldn’t matter if those chances _weren’t_ so low; it wasn’t like they’d been together like that at the time and she had been free to do what...or whomever she pleased.

No matter how he tried to reason through it, Nick knew the answer might well and truly kill him if he read through this little truth in his hands. It was a selfish thing, but he’d thought of Nora as his own long before she’d ever stepped into his office _that_ night, wearing _that_ dress and calling his name. He didn’t really want to know if she’d desired that man...he wanted to be the only one she’d ever dreamed of.

As he went to set the book down on the coffee table and wash his hands of the whole sordid business for the night, his eyes set once again on that little glass shoe, winking at him in the light of the room. For all he’d worried about people like MacCready back in the day, when Nick really thought about it, he’d never seen Nora get cozy with anyone outside of himself in the romantic kind of way. The more he tried to imagine her making eyes at that tall stranger, the less likely a scenario it seemed. 

Getting back to his feet, Nick hesitated only a moment before walking to the record player and setting the Doris Day album back in place beneath the needle. He knew the words to _Someday, I’ll Find You_ by heart now, even if he hadn’t previously. It was the love letter she’d left behind for him. A promise that they’d made together.

Rounding on the offending little comic, Nick stormed to the couch, sat down and picked it up; cracking it open before he could change his mind.

The story he found inside was much different than he’d imagined it would be.

The Institute had fallen, the Brotherhood was on the run, and Nora was newly retired from her positions as General of the Minutemen and Agent of the Railroad. She’d given up all her titles to become his partner on a more permanent basis, and though she was still wearing her white wings on the pages, she’d begun switching them out for plainer clothes now and then as she acquired them alongside furniture for her brand new residence at Home Plate.

It was the first year she’d had the chance to explore the summer caravan, and only the third year the Crimson Trails Caravan had been making their rounds. Nick was already out and about the trading grounds with Nat chattering away by his side. He remembered Piper being less worried than he’d been about letting Nat check out the stalls, and he’d stayed close at hand with a sharp tongue and his metal claw never far from his pistol, just in case.

He’d never known Nora had been watching him from a distance as he and Nat bargained for exotic treasures.

The man with the metal arm had noticed, however. 

He was tall and broad shouldered, with straight dark hair tied back at the nape of his neck. His skin was more than a little sun kissed beneath the heavy duster and rancher’s hat. He was the kind of handsome you saw in the old Big Boss tobacco ads; the kind of handsome that rode horses and hogtied cattle and looked like they could break rock with the edge of their chins. That man would have been that kind of handsome if his left eye hadn’t been left a milky white under the length of a deep scar that ran from his forehead to his chin. He’d have been handsome, if not for the cybernetic arm that stuck out of his coat.

“You stare any harder at that old bot, Darlin’,” he drawled as he sat beside her in the panel on the first page. “And people might say that look’s more than just a passin’ interest in his paint job.”

“So, what if it is?” she asked coolly, refusing to look at him.

“Then it’s a sad day when a girl pretty as you, loses her heart to a man that’s not even lookin’ her way,” he flashed her a charming smile. “‘Specially when that man ain’t even got a heart to give.”

Nora turned sharply at that, anger drawn in her blue eyes.

“You don’t know a damn thing about him, you..,” she pointed a finger in accusation at his chest.

“Six,” he grinned, sliding his hand into her own and shaking it. “Pleasure to make the acquaintance of the famous Lady of the Commonwealth.”

She drew her hand back, even as she glared at him in suspicion.

“Don’t look at me that way, Darlin’,” the man called Six laughed. “Stories trade as well anythin’ else with the Caravan. Already heard a dozen or so tales about the Angel with White Wings...had to see for myself what sorta fearsome creature you might be.”

Nora had excused herself from the bench shortly afterwards, but throughout the course of the week, wherever she walked, Six would inevitably show up. Their interactions went from barely contained loathing on Nora’s part, to an eventual sort of friendship over drinks at the Dugout Inn. They traded war stories; and despite the vast difference in their heights and appearance, both Six and Nora were eerily similar in the way they’d changed the post-war towns they woke up in.

They also both wore Pip-Boys at the time, which was a rarity in and of itself. A mark they shared between them. 

Six was some kind of courier from way out West, near a place called New Vegas. He’d been shot in the head on a bad delivery run, and gone through hell and back to get at the man that had done it. In the process, he’d made comrades much in the way that Nora did, and had not only helped stabilize both New Vegas and the surrounding areas with the help of some government group called the NCR, he’d also managed to convince the two major caravan companies in the area to stop killing each other and merge into one group.

The result was the Crimson Trails Caravan, which Six had become a regular runner for; still under his old Courier title. They were known for pushing through territory no one else would cross, and while it took a few years and a lot of good men and women’s lives to find a route, Six’s Caravan had carved a path that circled from New Vegas up through the Capital Wasteland on it’s way to Diamond City and back again.

He regaled her with tales of life on the road; of a world destroyed from coast to coast and the people still thriving along the way. He asked her about her life after she’d woken up in the Vault and the road that had taken her from Savior of the Commonwealth to a desk job in Diamond City.

“It’s not a desk job,” she insisted as they walked the marketplace. 

“It ain’t the place for a woman like you,” Six argued. “There’s a whole big world left out there, big enough, you might even find a bot that could love you back if’n that’s what you’re into.”

“You don’t know anything about him,” Nora shook her head.

“Know a thing or two about you now, though,” he grinned at her playfully. “Reckon’ I might know enough to think you’re the kinda gal I could trust to have my back out there. Bet you’re the kinda gal what knows her way around a pretty big gun.”

“I’ll stick to my pistol, thanks,” she rolled her eyes. “And to Diamond City.”

“Flip you for it,” he pulled a bottle cap out of his pocket, a glowing blue star marking its top. “Star I win and you come on the road with me, underside you win and I leave you here pinin’ over that old junk heap of yours.”

She glared at him, but couldn’t keep from looking at the cap.

“What is that?”

“A Sunset Sarsaparilla star cap,” he passed it to her. “Worth more than most lives to some out in the Mojave. Ain’t worth a hill o’beans this far East though. Funny, how one person might see the worth a somethin’ and the next guy won’t, don’t ya think?”

She handed it back to him.

“I’ll pass, thanks,” she walked on. “Don’t think I want to play the numbers on that bet.”

By the last day of the Caravan’s time in Diamond City, Piper had Nora all done up in her old Vault 111 suit on account of one of the traders giving better deals to his fellow “vaulties”. He had an old DataPlex 2000 SmarTerminal the reporter was anxious to get her hands on, even if it meant parading Nora around in that skin tight blue suit, and promising Power Noodles would be on her for the next three months.

It hadn’t taken long for Six to find her, after Piper had scored her prize.

“Woo, Darlin’,” he slid around her, admiring the suit and the way it clung to her lithe limbs. “You could kill a man struttin’ around in that.”

“I have,” she said wryly, unimpressed.

Despite the nonchalance with which she treated him, the pair had spent the day walking the city and the nearby Fens, taking in the sights and talking. It was late in the evening and the moon was brightly hung in a starless sky, before he’d walked her home.

“Come with me,” he blurted out as they stood in the shadows before her red door. “Woman like you? You’d put every caravanner and Courier to shame.”

“I appreciate the offer, Six, but,” she shook her head. “This is my home.”

“You know you ain’t never gonna be happy here,” he tried again. “How long do you plan on waitin’ for that old scrap heap to take to noticin’ you?”

“Maybe forever,” she smiled wistfully. “It’s enough to be here for me. We work together…”

“And what happens when that’s no longer enough?” he asked, stepping closer to her. “What happens when you give your heart to a man that don’t have none for you in return?”

“You don’t know him,” she said quietly.

“So you keep sayin’. But, I know your type, Darlin’. Restless,” he murmured. “Same as me.”

“I can wait,” she sighed, privately wondering if forever would be long enough.

“And what’ll you do while you wait?” he breathed, ghosting his metal arm down her own. “What d’ya spend all your time imaginin’, when you’re alone in that big empty house of yours?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she laughed, though it didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“You can’t lie to me, Honey. Think I can read you like the North Star,” he chuckled. “You ever think about you and that bot of yours when you lie awake at night? ‘Bout him touchin’ you real soft-like with that old metal claw of his?”

As he spoke, he dragged the splayed fingers of his metal hand down the curve of her hip. Nora started.

“Six..!” she started to admonish him, just as his lips came down hard on her own.

For a moment, Nora squirmed and pushed against him as one of Six’s hands cupped her backside and the metal one yanked the zipper of her Vault suit down to her navel.

“You ever touch yourself when you’re alone, dreamin’ it’s him what’s got his hands on ya?” he panted, sliding his cybernetic hand under the tight blue material and manhandling one of her breasts. “Thinkin’ bout how good it’d feel to have his skinny metal ass pumpin’ away between those pretty thighs…”

In her surprise at his boldness, Nora _had_ been thinking about that very thing, but as the steel in his fingers tried to travel lower beneath her suit, sense came back to her. She longed for Nick to touch her in ways she would be embarrassed for her partner to know, but this man, this Courier Six, he wasn’t the man she wanted.

“No,” she snarled low in her throat; shoving him away and reaching for her pistol at the same time she slid her zipper back into place. She was ashamed at how much his touch had affected her in his ambush, even if it had been Nick’s hands she’d been imagining.

“Just makin’ my point, Darlin’,” he noted somewhat sadly, despite the laugh he forced out. “You got a hell of a fire burnin’ in you. Don’t let it burn out on a man what can’t even see you for the treasure you are.”

“You..,” she tried to summon something like the coolness she’d always carried with her into the battlefield, but the need for air and the still fresh images Six had put in her mind kept her shaking for control. “You don’t know a goddamned thing about him.”

“So, you say,” he snorted wistfully. He pulled the Sarsaparilla bottle cap out of his pocket, the blue star bright and illuminated in the night sky. “But if you’re so confident in that man of yours, let’s make a wager.”

He flipped the bottle cap, caught it and tossed it her way. She snatched it out of the air on reflex before it could drop to the ground below.

“Next time I happen by, if that bot a’yours manages to grow a heart to give ya, I’ll leave ya be,” he nodded, serious in his words. “But if not...if there’s really nothin’ there he can give ya...consider takin’ to the road with a man that could still offer you one.”

He held up his metal hand and gave her a cheeky grin.

“Even got the metal hand, if’n that’s what you’re into.”

“Goodbye, Six,” Nora stared at him incredulously. The man was bold as sin.

“Until next time, Darlin’,” he tipped his hat and turned on his heel.

Nora watched him until he hit the marketplace and then fumbled for her keys; stumbling into Home Plate and shoving the door closed behind her. She sneered at the little bottle cap still in her fingers and went to throw it across the room, when her hand stopped right before she let go.

_What happens while you wait?_

His words burned her as she leaned back against her front door and gasped for air; willing her heart to be calm. Much as Nora wanted to believe Nick could love her, that he might love her... _someday_..; Six’s words still lingered. Of all the men she could have fallen in love with since waking in the Commonwealth, it would _have_ to be her partner. She wasn’t fully sure he was even interested in such things, let alone her. 

And yet...there were so many moments between them where he made her _hope_.

Since she’d come to realize her own feelings, Nora had been careful to maintain control over them, as the ache and longing they inspired threatened to drown her. But that damned _cowboy_ , that Six, he’d gone and put those ideas in her head; had touched her while her mind had been helpfully supplying her with every fantasy she’d not allowed herself to indulge in, and now?

She was burning.

With a snarl of frustration, she slid the lock of her door closed, and dropped the damn little cap onto her coffee table before rolling onto her back atop the couch; staring at the ceiling in anger.

She wasn’t doing this. She _wasn’t_ doing this. Nick was her friend for godsakes and of _course_ she thought he was handsome and charming and it was only natural she felt things for him with all the time they’d spent together and...and she was...she was…

Oh _fuck_ it. She was _definitely_ doing this.

Her fingers fluttered to the zipper of her Vault suit, dragging it down as far as it would go before tentatively sliding her thin fingers between the wet folds hidden therein. She groaned shamefully as she rubbed at herself, imagining the hand working pleasure between her legs wasn’t her own and that Nick’s breathy little chuckle filled her ears with its sweet music as he hands slid over her breasts.

Nick whimpered against a moan as he flipped through the pages; intricate drawings of Nora pleasuring herself on their couch with his name whispered in little speech bubbles from her lips; as pictures of him licking her and playing with her and fucking her appeared in the nearby panels. It was far more real than any pre-war spank mag he’d ever come across, and the thought of her doing _this_ back _then_ with _him_ in her thoughts driving her mad, sent him spinning.

He hadn’t even realized he’d been palming himself through his trousers, but as he turned the page and more of her Vault suit had been peeled off while she chased her thoughts of him towards her little death, Nick flicked open the latch at his waistband and worked himself free from the material. 

He hissed as his palm encircled his erection, the tightly woven sensor net there flaring up and sparking as he stroked himself in long, firm tugs; his eyes locked on the images of Nora in that damned little book. Sore as he was that man, Six, had dared to lay hands on her at all, the heat that sprang up as Nick’s fans spun to high in the face of her need for her old partner was overwhelming. He wondered how many nights she’d spent with fingers between her slick folds and his name pouring from her lips as she dreamed of him fucking her. The thought of her pining for him and driving herself to orgasm with only the fantasy of him to fulfill her needs was frustrating, and he pumped himself into his fist with fervorous desperation to be deep within her now and reassuring her with every stroke that her every _want_ , her every _need_ was _his_ to fulfill; and that he’d gladly give her everything he had to offer for the rest of their lives between the perfection of her thighs and her breath in his lungs as they moved together beneath bed sheets.

He thought of the feelings she’d ignited in his body last night, when the other Nick had been fucking her, quick and hard and wild in his thrusts. He was almost positive she’d been wearing a pair of those damned stockings that always sent him up the walls, and neither one of them had undressed enough for him to feel everything he’d wanted to at that moment. He tried to hold onto the wet heated sensation of her as she’d surrounded him, pulled at him, thrust against him as his hand worked his hardened length towards a feverish pitch. He came violently between his own fingers; lightning sparking through his wires and causing his fans to stutter as he rode the pleasure buzzing over his synthetic skin to completion.

When his mind had floated back into some semblance of consciousness, Nick flipped to the last page of the comic, finding an image of himself, kissing her on their wedding day. The drawing of Nora standing in his arms in that little dress of hers looked happy. Radiant.

She looked like a woman in love, and he looked like the man who loved her.

Nick felt a sharp pull in his chest as he fixed his trousers and set the book back on her shelves. He thought again back to his other self and the wild plan he was desperate to try, in a play to reconnect their memories. Nick wasn’t sure that the rings were the answer they were looking for right now, but he hoped something from his wedding day might prove to be.

As he crawled under the sunny yellow comforter, careful not to disturb the trench coat and dress still lying where they’d left them at the end of the bed, Nick pulled her pillow tightly to his chest and inhaled the sweet scent of her homemade hair soap. It was a poor replacement, and as his mind began to drift, his last thought for the evening was that he wanted to be back in the arms of his wife.

Nick was tired of sleeping alone. 

From the other room, Doris Day continued to sing him her lullaby and in the morning, he’d make fresh coffee and tend to the roses. He’d go over the evidence again and compare his notes with his counterpart’s and see what might start connecting for him. He’d continue living in Nora’s old apartment across the river from his own.

Someday, he’d find a way back to the woman who’d once made a bet under the moonlight with a stranger.

A wager that Nick still had a heart to give her-- a heart she wanted--even when that heart had been neon pink and hanging from a rusty piece of metal down on Third Street. 

The ghost of her lips pressed against his own; kissing one Nick good morning and her other Nick, goodnight.

He held her pillow a little tighter as her caresses echoed over his skin, lulling his mind to calm and drift.

He could feel her shifting away from him;her morning and his evening never seeming to match anymore.

He dreamed of his girl.

He dreamed of her sunlight.

He dreamed of his life.


	35. Caravan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! Thank you for the comments on the last chapter! They kept me working today!

During the daylight hours, Nick spent the majority of the two days since Nora and he had arrived back in Diamond City in the office; sorting through a backlog of paperwork Ellie had been piling on his desk that he’d been ignoring. 

His little secretary had practically dragged him through the marketplace by the ear, scolding him the whole way to Third Street about not finishing his work for her before he went gallivanting around with his wife and that no good Mayor of Goodneighbor; whom Ellie declared a bad influence on the detective. By the time she’d left him in his chair with a pen and instructions not to leave his desk again until the first pile of case forms had been signed and filed properly, Nick wondered if she and Fahrenheit had ever had the chance to talk. From the stories John had told him about his right hand woman, Nick thought she and Ellie might have a lot in common.

By noon that day, he’d decided the pair should never be allowed to meet; lest they take over both Goodneighbor and Diamond City, ruling the free towns under a load of paperwork and a stern look.

During the nighttime hours, he visited with his counterpart while he dreamed, and the pair continued looking for alternate connection points that might restore their minds into one complete being. The other Nick still seemed unconvinced that the _rings_ were the key, though he’d been kind enough to give Nick a clue as to Nora’s size for when the Caravan showed up. While the man with the yellow eyes seemed reticent to offer any new theories backed by any solid evidence, Nick had noticed two things since they’d started working the case in Nora’s old apartment.

One: The other Nick had piled the coffee table with every volume containing Nora’s memories of them from the top shelf, and tiny scraps of paper marked pages in all seven yellow volumes, while the grey linen hardback never seemed far from his reach. There was also a big, bright blue textbook on the table now with gold lettering that read “Buster” in the same print as the Boston Bugle used to use. The newspaper thin pages were dog eared and marked up with black pen and the bookmark he was using within it never seemed to change spots from it’s place near the end of the book.

Two: The other Nick had begun to ask him very pointed questions about Nick’s first and only meeting with Nora before the bombs; the day he’d met her at Buster’s funeral in that big house under the wisteria tree with the roses. Nick assumed his counterpart was simply interested in more information about that initial run in, but the more they talked, the more he realized the other Nick was _interrogating_ him. He asked the same questions over and over again, until Nick was blue in the face from saying “Yes, I’m sure that’s what I saw.” or “Yes, that’s how I would describe it.” Nick wasn’t sure what the other version of him was _investigating_ with that incident, but he always got this odd little smile across his face as he cross referenced the notes afterwards. 

When Nick finally asked about it, the other Nick had been cryptic in his answers; but was now seemingly enthusiastic about Nick’s plans to go through the whole wedding deal again. Every time Nick tried to question him for more details on the day he and Nora had tied the knot, the Great Synth Detective just shrugged and said the time of day wasn’t as important as everything leading up to it. He’d talked more about the night before their marriage than the day of, and by the third night they’d met up in Nora’s old apartment, Nick was more than suspicious.

“You figured it out, _didn’t_ you?” he accused his doppelganger with a grin, as the other Nick pushed a blue carnival glass tumbler of brandy at him and Doris Day crooned from the stereo. “You know why we dream about her in the sunlight.”

“It’s just a theory,” the other Nick smiled, swirling his brandy. 

“Comon’,” Nick badgered him. “What is it? How’d you figure it out?”

“It was staring me right in the face,” the man with the yellow eyes gave a chuckle. “Just like she said, that Nora from my dream. _I_ just hadn’t _seen_ it yet.”

“I hate to say it,” Nick shook his head. “But I’m not following.”

“I wasn’t either,” his counterpart’s gaze fell on the little glass shoe still sitting on the coffee table; a faraway look in his eyes. “But then I remembered something that cracked the whole thing open for me.”

“Oh, yeah?” Nick quirked a brow at him in amusement. “What’s that?”

“You’re _me_ ,” he met Nick’s grey eyes with his yellow, a calm in that glow so unnerving, Nick wasn’t sure what to make of it. “And I’m _you_.”

“I think we’ve established that fairly well,” Nick agreed. “Though right now, you’re making me wonder.”

“I’m not the one who needs to make the connection,” the other Nick told him bluntly. “ _You’ve_ gotta catch a glimpse of it first. You’re the _one_ that hasn’t _seen_ it yet.”

“Seen what?” Nick asked, confused.

“The reason we dream of Nora in the sunlight,” he said wistfully, sipping at his brandy. “The reason we’re always looking backwards.”

“The sunlight through the shadows,” Nick murmured, remembering the words from his own dream now. “It _was_ about Nora after all, wasn’t it.”

“I think we’ve both been looking for her for…,” the other Nick gave a snort mixed full of disbelief and amusement. “For a helluva long time.”

Nick thought a long moment about what his counterpart was insinuating. 

“My life didn’t start in the Commonwealth, did it?” he asked finally.

“No,” the other Nick offered up a lopsided smile. “But our new life will...I’m throwing all my cards in on this one.”

“Take the gamble,” Nick nodded. “See where it gets us?”

“Hopefully back together again,” the other Nick mimicked him. “And in the meantime, we do things up right this time. Get the ring, ask her properly...the whole works.”

“Sure you can wait that long?” Nick asked, in all seriousness.

“For her?” he chuckled and leaned back into the couch. “I could wait forever.”

“Well, let’s hope this works out then,” Nick grinned. “Forever is a long time, and there’s much better ways we could be spending it.”

The other Nick raised his glass in a toast.

“To finding Cinderella,” he offered.

“And solving the case of her missing glass shoe,” Nick agreed, clinking their glasses together.

They sat together like that for a while. Just sitting; in Nora’s old apartment, surrounded by her memories.

“What do you suppose it’ll feel like,” the other Nick asked quietly. “When it happens, I mean. When we’re back together.”

He shifted uncomfortably for a moment, setting his brandy down on the table.

“Much as we might be the same, we’re pretty separate at the moment,” he continued slowly. “You don’t...you don’t suppose it’ll be like dyin’ do ya?”

Nick shook his head.

“No, I don’t,” he answered honestly. “I think...I think it’ll be like waking up. Like all the times I dreamed I was you or you dreamed you were me. We’ll just be us.”

The other Nick raised his glass again and slowly held it out in another toast.

“To being _us_ ,” he said softly.

“To becoming the first Nick Valentine that gets to play with a full deck,” Nick murmured back. 

He woke shortly after that sip of brandy and for a moment, he swore he remembered the sound of his fans starting up as his sleep cycle ended. The Pip-Boy on their nightstand read just after eight in the morning, and Nick carefully extracted himself from Nora’s grasp, kissing the top of her sleeping head before heading down to take a shower. He took it as a mark of his growing skills that she curled deeper into the mattress instead of springing out of bed with him today. Nick had worn her out last night, driving himself madly into her until she was spent and shaking in his arms.

He wanted her rested; for if everything went as planned, he could ask her to marry him... _again_...tonight. 

The caravan was finally in town and by eleven, the shop stalls would be set up and open, just outside the gates of Diamond City. Nat had promised to meet up with him early for the express purpose of finding a ring before the Upper Stands crowd had even made it out of bed. With any luck, he might find something to replace the silver band she’d lost before the cap-heavy crowd bought the whole lot.

Ellie would murder him if he didn’t finish the last bit of paperwork first, however, and much as he wanted to linger in the warm water and the scent of Nora’s soap, Nick rushed to finish with his ablutions and get on with his day. He was showered, shaved and dressed in record time, strapping on his pistol holster, knotting his tie and clipping his old Boston Police Department badge to his belt, before forgoing the trench coat in favor of his hat and rolled up shirt sleeves. He’d never walked around town, before or after the bombs, so casually before, and he’d garnered quite a few surprised looks on his way to the office, but the warm August air would no doubt feel warmer in the midst of so many people out and about to trade with the Caravan today, and Nick was already feeling a little hot under the collar as it was. 

By a quarter to ten, Nick was feeling fairly accomplished. He’d signed and filed every last paper in his inbox, got ahead on approving the new expenses sheet that Ellie had been after him about looking at in his free time, and was in the process of pouring himself a cup of coffee in the kitchenette, when he heard the door open downstairs.

“That you, El?” he called. “Just made some coffee if you’re up for it.”

“I’d love some,” the voice that responded in amusement was most definitely not Ellie.

“Nora,” he greeted his wife, as he made his way downstairs with the thought of making her breakfast. “You didn’t have to come in to the office today, Doll. Thought I’d let you sleep in before we…”

Nick stopped just shy of stepping into the main office room. 

She was leaning against his desk with her hair curled and her lips stained a soft pink.

She was wearing his trench coat; buttoned and tied on and long enough to be a modest sort of dress. If not for the eyes she was making at him, he might have believed that.

“You could kill a man with that look,” he murmured; heart already beginning to pound. “What’s the occasion?” 

“Thought I’d take my new dress out for a spin,” she gestured towards herself and coyly crossed one naked leg over the other as she shifted her weight against the table top.

“You..,” he swallowed hard. “You walked over here like that?”

“You did say you wanted me to try on your coat, didn’t you?” she threw him that impish little smirk that always meant trouble.

“Y-yeah, but...kinda had someplace a little more private in mind for that show,” he chuckled and slid his hands into his trouser pockets; adjusting himself as his thoughts began to grow wilder by the moment. 

“The office not private enough for you, Detective?” she purred.

“We’re not the only one with keys, Doll,” he reminded her wryly. 

“I saw Ellie on the way over. She’s spending the day with Travis,” Nora said innocently. “And the door’s locked.”

“I’m, ah..,” he coughed, trying not to think too much on that. “I’m supposed to meet Nat by the gate before eleven.”

“Plenty of time,” she grinned wickedly.

“You’re making this awfully hard for me to say no,” he licked his lips nervously. His voice felt raw.

“Do you want to say no?” she asked in all seriousness.

“I..,” he cleared his throat. “No” was the furthest response in his mind right now. “I’ve gotta _work_ here, Doll. Y-you...you have to work _here_. We work here together, y’know?”

“You haven’t thought about us doing this at the office?” she sat back on his desk, a playful tone in her voice.

“Of course I have,” he chuckled nervously. “ _Often_... but, ah... dunno how much work I’ll be getting done if I’m always thinking about bending you over my desk.”

“What makes you think you haven’t already?” she asked coyly.

Suddenly, the image of that dream office came to mind. The night he’d taken that hit of Jet and first met the other Nick. He thought about Nora’s dress on the table and his shirt on the floor and he swallowed hard as he realized that probably hadn’t been as much of a _dream_ as he’d assumed it was.

“A-already with the desk, huh?” he strained the words out.

“And the chair,” she added, helpfully.

His trousers were becoming painfully tight as he imagined all the ways he’d fantasized about taking her in their office. About all the ways he’d tried to avoid blurring his personal and professional life out of some misguided sense of decorum.

Well, hang that.

“What’ve you got on under that coat, Doll?” his voice was dangerously sonorous and gravel-filled. 

“Not a damn thing,” she smiled back at him, the white of her teeth flashing flirtatiously.

“Show me,” he choked out.

Nora held his gaze as she untied the belt and worked the buttons free with slow, sensuous movements of her nimble fingers. She finished by grabbing both edges of the tan material and pulling them gracefully open.

“Scandalous,” he breathed his favorite word for her, already moving towards the desk. “Never met such a brazen dame in my life.”

“Ah, ah,” she laughed and pulled the coat closed as he made to reach for her. She gestured at his chair behind her. “Take a seat, Mister Valentine.”

“Why?” He loomed over her, eyes already half lidded and lost to the intoxication of her scent; he’d never tire of her soap mixing with his smokes. “Going to interrogate me, Copper?” 

“I assure you,” she grabbed him by the tie and directed him towards the chair. “My methods can be _very_ persuasive.” 

Nick fell back into his chair as she rounded the desk in front of him. She leaned back against the table top again with a casual air, eyeing him carefully.

“Sizing me up?” he chuckled, mimicking her actions and putting on his best game face.

“Something like that,” she smirked. “Unbuckle that belt for me, Handsome.”

He held her gaze, feigning control, even as his fingers shook against the brass and leather of his belt. Nick slid the strap free and waited for her.

“Can’t do much with those trousers in the way,” she said suggestively. “Open them up and slide them down a bit, would you?”

“Keeping your prisoner in suspense, I see,” he rasped out, and he did what she wished. He popped the button and slid the zipper open, before hooking his thumbs into the waistband and sliding them just far enough down his hips to free himself. He was hard and stiff and ready for her. “Plan on strip searching me or is that good for you?”

“Hands at your sides, Detective,” she said coolly. “Try to keep them there.”

“Didn’t know we’d be playing hardball today,” he cleared his throat, and forced his arms to relax. The anticipation of her riding him in his chair was exquisite, and his member twitched for her touch, even as his fingers flexed around the seat of his chair. “Can’t promise how long I’ll be able to keep my hands to myself once you climb on, Doll.”

“Who said anything about climbing on?” she cooed, stepping towards him and letting the trench coat fall open. 

Nick caught one glorious glimpse of her bare skin before she tipped his hat down over his eyes. He shivered as he felt her slide down in front of him.

“What are you up to?” he panted out, fairly certain those were her forearms resting on his thighs now.

The feeling of her body coming to rest between his knees and the sudden rush of her breath against his erection compiled in his brain a moment too late. The first swipe of her tongue up his length choked a howl out of his throat, and his hat tipped back with his head just enough where he could see her clearly now; perched on her knees before him with one delicate hand wrapped around the base of his cock.

She repeated the motion with her tongue, and Nick thought he might die, right then and there. This was...she was…

“Oh god, Nora—!” he moaned as she stroked him a third time. “P-please—!”

“Please what?” she murmured, her hand gently stroking his length in place of what he really wanted there. “ _Tell_ me what you _need_ , Nick.”

The words caught fast on his tongue, and he clenched his teeth as her hand ran up his length again. There was...there was _no way_ he could say the words to her; to ask her _blatantly_ to commit this kind of bawdy act on him. It was one thing to tease about with silver words and a masque of playfulness padding the truth, but this…

Oh god, he _really_ wanted this.

“What do you want me to _do_ , Detective?” she purred again, nuzzling his thigh coquettishly while her hand moved with a tortuously light touch over his heated skin.

“You..,” he stuttered out, his hands painfully gripping the chair as a tawdry blush colored his cheeks. “Y-your mouth…”

“What about it?” she cooed, stroking back down the length of him like a ghost.

“Jesus, Nora—!” he cried out through gritted teeth. “U-use your _mouth_...please!”

“Where?” she barely breathed the word, so close to him now, he was reeling. 

He could feel the shame burning in his ears long before his tongue started moving again.

“O-on me,” he choked out. “ _Goddamnit_...u-use your mouth on me!”

“All you ever have to do is _ask_ ,” she said, the smoke in her voice so low and alluring it sent rivers of pleasure straight up his spine where he could feel the reverberation of her words against his thigh.

He watched in desperation now as she moved over him. Watched as she licked her lips to wet them. Watched as she slid them down over his tip before the hot, wet pressure of her mouth enveloped him.

The sound that escaped his throat was downright obscene; a sharp inhale of desire that fell into a long drawn out groan. She started slowly on him, dragging the wet velvet of her tongue along the underside of his shaft while her palm tightened around his base. When she dipped upon him a second time, his hands refused to stay at his sides. He tangled them wildly into her hair, the dark satin soft under his fingertips a sharp contrast to the heat working between his legs. He screwed his eyes shut, trying not to think.

The short whine of desperation that erupted from him when Nora released him again was the very definition of needy, and he turned ever redder at the indecent sound. Her lips placed gentle kisses down his length, soothing some of the disconnection from her contact. When a moment passed and she didn’t return to him, his eyes fluttered open to find her waiting.

“You can watch me, Nick,” she said invitingly, her blue skies warm and loving against his grey storm. “Direct me, ok?” 

He swallowed hard and nodded nervously, hands already tentatively urging her back to him. He forced himself not to turn away as she went down on him again, abashed as he watched the woman he loved working him over with her mouth. The slick, wet sounds that assaulted his ears sent shivers down Nick’s spine and he nearly broke when she hummed in pleasure around him.

There was something about this act that Nick had always found to be particularly taboo; something dirty and visceral and beneath him, even as he’d secretly been fascinated by it. Maybe it was the flippant and lewd ways the boys down at the station would chat about it in the locker room between shifts. Maybe it was the way society back in the day clutched it’s pearls at the mere idea of a lady lowering herself to such a guttural act. Whatever had caused it, Nick had always been beyond ashamed in his desires to experience it; even as he’d tugged himself to completion over photos of it in the magazines he’d kept under his mattress back in that old apartment of his, when the need for release arose.

The longer he watched Nora’s lips sliding over his hardened length, however, the less he began to think of it as a shameful act and the more aroused he became. There was a sensuousness to the way she moved over him; an intimacy as he watched her pleasuring him with the sweet heat of her mouth. He was breathtakingly aware of every minute motion and change in pressure she assaulted him with in the delicacy of her care, and he felt himself melting under the adoring devotion she was treating him with under such a self-indulgent act.

When she purred low in her throat and sucked in while she glided along his length, a sharp surge of desire crashed through his veins. He cried out her name as his treacherous hands could no longer hold still, and his fingers ran mindlessly through her hair, coaxing her into a gentle rhythm against him. Her tongue lapped at the underside of his head and he moaned coarsely; hands fisting in her hair and tugging...which she seemed to enjoy. He gathered her dark hair in his palms, and allowed himself a firmer pull through her locks. She rewarded him with a little _noise_ each time he did so, that sent sparks straight through his chest alongside a need to match her movements with his hips.

Her mouth shifted in its angle against him, and suddenly; it was _perfect_.

“ _Christ_ , right...right _there_ , Doll—!” he urged her on breathlessly. “D-don’t stop...”

He leaned into her even as his hands helped set the pace, stroking her silk-soft skin in graceless gestures as all focus fell to that single point where she taunted him. Her tongue swirled around his tip; and the rush of tormented bliss that rose over him stripped what little restraint he had left. He begged her shamelessly in heated, needy words as she sucked at him, and the smoldering look she threw his way as she raked her tongue mercilessly against his sensitive skin sent him crashing; shock waves of pleasure lighting up his nerves and racing through his blood. 

He sobbed her name in gratified gasps and moans, feeling the tight undulating suction of her mouth as she swallowed down all he had to offer. In the aftermath of his moment, Nick whispered sweet words of devotion to her, massaging his fingers again and again the the silk of her hair while she gently released him and rested her head against his thigh.

When he was sensible enough again to feel his racing heart trying to slow down with his breaths, he caught her watching him, a satisfied little grin across her cheeks.

“Where in the hell did you learn to do _that_?’ he panted, pulling at her arms until she was straddling his lap where he could embrace her. The need to hold her right now, even as his limbs shook, was visceral.

“A little talent,” she whispered playfully in his ear. “And a whole lot of _practice_ under your desk.”

Nick groaned at that thought and trailed excited kisses down her neck, along her shoulder, and against any skin he could reach.

“Definitely, talented,” he shuddered and ducked his head to her shoulder; the warm tingle of embarrassment crawling through his skin amid the satisfaction.

“Hey. I meant what I said. You can ask me for anything, you know,” she wrapped her arms around him, stroking soothing little circles into his scalp and gently rubbing the blush from his ears. “There’s nothing between us to ever feel ashamed about.”

“I know,” he murmured, tightening his grip on her. In all truth, he had been avoiding asking her for anything like this, despite their banter back in Goodneighbor. He should have known she’d take notice when he hadn’t brought his desire for her in this way back up again. “What about you?”

“Thought you had to meet Nat by the gate,” she laughed softly, her teeth grazing his earlobe and eliciting a shuddering gasp from his lips as his hands grasped at her backside in response.

“I—I’ve got the time,” he whispered harshly as she stroked the sensitive spot behind his ear. Spent as he’d been just a moment before, the fire was already building again deep in his belly, and his hips thrust in tiny jerks; the blood returning to his groin.  
“P-plenty of time… always… for you...”

She hummed in approval and licked at that little pulse point beneath his jaw that always got him going. The harshest of breaths broke from his lungs a split second before he nudged her cheek with his chin and his mouth slammed against hers in need. The kiss lasted; a conversation in moans passed between their lips as he thrust with purpose against the slick seam of her sex. She soaked the skin of his thighs as she writhed in his lap and Nick growled in frustration; the damned chair refused to give him purchase. He made a mental note to find one that had some sort of arm rests in the near future.

“Bend over that desk for me, Beautiful,” he panted, drawing her back to his mouth and sweeping his tongue against hers one last time before releasing her.

Nora slid off him on shaking legs, dropping the trench coat and leaving herself in little but her best birthday suit, a smattering of freckles, and his silver ring hanging from her neck. The love-drugged look she gave him as his clothing fell away from her drove him to distraction; a need that defied reason pulling him to his feet as she turned away from him. He watched in rapt attention as she leaned across the width of his desk, one lithe arm reaching clear to the other side and gripping the table edge in preparation. His hands found her hips as she arched her back and he penetrated her under the onslaught of raw, physical desire.

His nerves were already stretched taut and to the breaking point as he slapped his hips against hers in a cacophony of quick, rough thrusts. She whined deliciously as he ravaged her willing heat, urging him on with husky whispers of longing while he buried himself to the hilt between her thighs. There was no way to prolong the pleasure when they were both this far gone, and Nick leaned over her; one hand white-knuckle gripping the desk beside her own as he drove himself deeper, and the other snaking over her hips until two fingers slid against her, drawing rough circles against her sodden little nub until she was keening under his touch.

His teeth grazed her shoulder as they spoke in rapid, shallow breaths; and he picked up this rhythm as passion’s tide threatened to wash him out.

“Tell me you want this, Nora,” he rasped desperately, slamming into her again. “Tell me you want _me_.”

“I want you, Nick—!” she gasped out through her cries. “—You know I do!”

“Then break for me, Doll,” he choked out, already feeling the beginnings of his end upon him, as she squirmed wildly beneath his hips. “And remind me so I don’t forget…”

She sang to him in sultry, incoherent mewls as he thrust his hips relentlessly into hers; his shaft hot and hard and throbbing. All reason drifted away as she called his name in wicked rapture, sealing his fate with her own, as she pulled him tumbling through the stars after her. They convulsed together over his desk and Nick struggled to keep his weight off her, even as his sweat-slicked brow fell to her shoulder. 

“Nick..,” she breathed his name, so quiet he was sure he’d imagined it.

“I love you, Nora,” he murmured, his smooth voice raw and husky against her skin. “I love you.”

She giggled softly beneath him and went boneless from the effort. 

“Hey Valentine,” she called to him; the melody of her love song muffled beneath gently labored breaths and his desk. “Me, too.”

He smacked her ass for the teasing tone she was throwing his way now, and reluctantly untangled from her, before helping her up like a gentlemen. Worried hands ran lightly over her hips and he wondered, regretfully, if she’d have bruises come the morning. She shooed him away under the assurance a mild stimpak would set things to right if such things came to pass, and she coaxed him to the small office shower with her, where they spent the next fifteen minutes soothing each other under hot water and long, unhurried kisses. Nick had once found the space to be too small for a single person, but with two, he decided it was just large enough. The lack of room left Nora tangled in him again as they worked the soap between them, and by the time they’d finished getting clean again, he was nearly ready for another round.

It was just how things were between them. He’d never be free of the fire she set inside him, and he was glad to burn for her.

“You’re going to be late,” she laughed at him while his hands wandered over the expanse of her thin t-shirt, even as she helped him with his tie.

“I’ve still got ten minutes,” he plucked kisses from her lips, trying to distract her from her task as he pulled at the belt rungs of her jeans. 

“Save some of that energy for after the festival,” she swatted him playfully away from her, and smoothed the wrinkles out of his shirt. The trousers he’d been wearing hadn’t been as salvageable and he’d finally understood why they kept so many extra sets of clothing between the office and Home Plate. “Come have some coffee with me before you head out.”

Nick hummed a little whine, but followed after her towards the office kitchenette. Much as she’d riled him up to the point he was thinking of spending the whole day with her at _work_ , he _did_ have another lead to follow that day, and Nat would be disappointed if he ditched on her.

As Nora poured the coffee, Nick whipped up a quick breakfast for them to share; once again thankful for Ellie’s insistent Home-Ec lessons when his wife reeled happily with every bite of his efforts.

“You’re going to have to run for it, Hotstuff,” she chuckled at him through a mouthful of eggs, and nodding at the time on his watch. 

“Where will you be today?” he finished off his coffee and rose from his chair, reluctant to head out for the gate.

“Around,” she smirked. “Why, you keeping tabs on me?”

“Always,” he kissed her forehead. “Thought we might meet up later, grab some dinner.”

“It’s a date,” she winked at him. “See you at seven, Mister Valentine.”

“Don’t keep me waiting, Doll,” he flashed his most brilliant grin back at her. “Got plans for you tonight.”

“Oh?” she eyed him suspiciously as he hit the stairs.

“Meet you back home!” he called over his shoulder with a wave.

“Fine, keep your secrets!” her laughter followed him as he neared the office door. 

Reaching for the door handle, Nick turned back and recovered his trench coat from the floor, slipping his arms through and tying the belt loosely at his waist before stepping out. He could use a bit of armor today, after all, and Nora’s soap-scent clung to the fibers, holding him tight as he made his way out of the shade covered street and into the sun.

“You’re late!” Nat huffed at him, hands on her hips as he finally crested the steps leading out of the stadium.

“Only by five minutes,” he ruffled her hair and puffed his breaths; falling into step beside her. “Had a lot of paperwork at the office.”

“How does Ellie put up with you?” Nat shook her head disapprovingly, sliding her smaller hand into his own.

“One of the world’s great mysteries,” Nick chuckled, giving her hand a squeeze. “Now, comon’ partner. We’ve got work to do.”

“Just remember,” Nat pointed at him meaningfully. “Keep it cool and let me do all the talking.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he tipped his hat in her direction. “Anything else?”

“Let’s stop by their food tent after!” Nat’s eyes lit up in excitement. “They’ve got this weird brand of Nuka Cola you’ve just gotta try.”

“Alright,” he beamed. “Sounds like a plan.”

A strange sort of comfort fell over Nick as Nat lead him through the crowd of people gathering at the city gates. She was a funny sort of kid, Piper’s sister, quick as a whip and wickedly observant, with a sharp tongue to match; but tough as she was, she was still a kid, and it was hard not to indulge in her delight as she ooo’d and ahh’d at the colorful banners draped around the pop-up marketplace.

He knew a little about what happened to Piper and Nat’s father and he imagined it’d been a long hard road for the sisters as they made their way to the relative safety of Diamond City. Nick, himself, had been an only child growing up and he didn’t have a lot of experience around kids, but Nat was easing him into it. He wasn’t sure what it was about him that she’d sometimes sought out for company, even back before he’d woken in this new world; back when he’d been made of steel and wires and a body pumping coolant instead of blood through his veins. Regardless of the reasons, Nat had become a sort of regular presence in his life; showing up for the occasional lunch or afternoon card game. 

Nora never said anything about it when he dropped his work and ran upstairs to the office kitchenette in search of Nuka Cola and snack cakes for when she stopped by, but he’d found a whole cupboard had been annexed for Nat’s visits now; an assortment of board games and books and Fancy Lads boxes always close at hand, though the Fancy Lads were always cleverly hidden on account of Deacon’s infrequent visits and his tendency to go looking outside of the drawer Nora had clearly marked his name on.

In truth, Nick hadn’t ever given much thought to kids in general back in the day. The boys at the station house always joked that he’d come into this world fully grown, and wearing the same cool expression he cracked criminals with under the hot lights. Jenny might have mentioned something about having little ones on the rare occasion, but it was always prefaced with a far off quantifier like “ _someday_ ”.

Nick wondered what Nora’s opinion on the whole matter might be. He imagined she probably got on with kids just fine; hell, she’d even had a son of her own once...horrible as that experience may have ended. He’d seen the easy way she interacted with Nat though, and on rarer occasions, with the young Minutemen recruits that started their work in Diamond City. Raising kids in the Commonwealth had to be a hell of a thing, what with all the monsters roaming the ruins now and the whole end of the world deal and all. Nick imagined having a Mr. Handy around to change nappies and handle the laundry was probably lower on the parental worry list these days in comparison to the important things; like survival.

He wondered absently how Nat had turned out so well, and if Piper knew what a great job she’d done in the years when she’d had to play both sister and parent to Nat. He wondered what she and Preston might do someday, if they ever got around to having kids. He couldn’t imagine Preston holing up in Diamond City for long and Piper didn’t seem like the type that would enjoy the Castle-life by the way she sounded off on it. Maybe they’d split the difference and take up in Sanctuary whenever it came to pass.

Nick wondered if Nat would go with them. He felt a little saddened by that thought; silly as it was, the kid was turning out to be one of his best pals.

It struck him rather suddenly then, that he and Nora might have a kid of their own someday; a real possibility considering how _frequently_ they...came together. That thought opened the floodgates, and his mind rushed with possibility. Jesus, he’d never thought of himself as being a father before; that idea was so far off the table, he’d never even entertained it. He doubted he’d ever discussed it with Nora previously, either, in that other body where things like babies weren’t a result of an evening’s activities. 

_Christ_ , he wasn’t even sure he _wanted_ to have kids. They made an awful lot of noise, didn’t they? Not to mention the boatload of care he assumed went into making sure they didn’t turn out funny. And how the hell did you even keep one alive in this day and age? He felt a cold sweat sweep over him in the face of a reality he hadn’t even considered for himself. He’d...he’d really been an idiot. What would Nora do if he saddled her with another Valentine to look after? She wasn’t exactly known for living the quiet life and he couldn’t imagine taking a baby into a firefight, in the same way he couldn’t imagine her setting down her guns for the long haul. Hell, what if he knocked her up and she resented him for it? Nick didn’t think he could live with that.

It was all too sudden and in that moment, he felt like he was just waking up from that damned Cryo-pod again; fresh and green and inexperienced in the Commonwealth life.

“What’s wrong?” Nat interrupted his rampantly running train of thought, right before it crashed into the station.

“Nothing,” he forced a grin. “Just...thinkin’ is all.”

“Well, you’re thinking too much,” Nat shook her head at him in disapproval. “Your hand’s shaking.”

“Sorry,” he said sheepishly, releasing his grip on her hand and tucking his into his pocket in embarrassment.

Nat swatted him and tugged at his sleeve until he returned his hand to her. 

“Here, let me hold it,” she demanded, slipping her fingers through his. “Piper says it helps to hold onto something when things get shady.”

Nat looked up at him as she patted his knuckles with her free hand.

“Everything’s going to be fine,” she said with grave seriousness. “I promise. Just hold onto me.”

Nick considered the tiny weight of her hand in his and wondered if his own kid would be as cool a character as Nat someday. If they’d be as smart talking and clever as their parents. If their eyes would be grey storms like his own, or clear blue skies like their mothers.

He squeezed Nat’s hand and smiled down at her in reassurance as they walked on. 

Being a father might not be so bad in the long run. If it was in their cards, well, he might even be a little excited at the prospect of a little Valentine running around someday. Nora already had every string in his heart tied to her fingers. He didn’t imagine he’d love a kid between them any less than the woman who’d be their mother.

As Nat and Nick worked their way through the Caravan marketplace, Nick was astounded at the sheer size of it all. Despite John Hancock’s grumblings about the cowboys and their behavior, he could understand why the people of the Commonwealth looked forward to the summer traders and their arrival. 

The Caravan group took up the entirety of the square outside the old ball park and then some; their bright red brahmin fenced in the little junkyard nearby and nearly twice the size of the pack animals he’d seen locally. Merchants called to them from every stall, decked out in a wild assortment of clothing; post-war cowboys and blue suited Vault dwellers covered in feathers and face paint; slick looking gamblers in smoking coats and rough looking dames in heavy armor and thick leather trenchcoats. There was even a super mutant or two among them, decked out in fur coats the size of small vests on their massive bodies, and accessorized with feather boas, bejeweled sunglasses and ridiculous straw flowered hats.

Every kind of old world treasure imaginable was on display; from trinkets and house baubles to computer parts and furniture that had probably cost quite a dime back in the day. Nat dragged him over to a sharply dressed gunslinger, decked out in black leathers from his boots up to his hat. The pristine white band of his black Stetson stood out against the shadows of his clothing with the same sharpness the whites of his eyes held set against his dark skin. The man stroked his beard thoughtfully upon their approach.

“I swear you grow faster than a radweed every year I see ya, kid,” his deep rich voice sounded in greeting as Nat strolled up to his station. “How old are we this time? Twelve? Thirteen?”

“I’ll be eleven next winter,” Nat declared proudly, leaning casually against the man’s table as if she’d just sidled up to a bar.

“Tough stock,” the man chuckled. “This your old man?”

“Nah, he’s a buddy of mine,” she grinned back at Nick. “We’re looking to buy a new caravan deck for him. What’ve ya got for sale, Jules?”

“Gotta start ‘em playin’ young!” he grinned broadly, the white of his teeth blinding. “You’ll end up a real road warrior someday, you keep wrackin’ up the caps with the cards, kid.”

“Flattery won’t raise the rate,” Nat smirked back at him, a sharp look in her eye.

“I like a woman who knows her business,” Jules laughed and pulled out an old velvet covered tray of card decks. “Only the winners for my best customer. What kind of deck are we talking here? A 3-4-5 standard? Or a 10-8-9 split?”

“A 10-6-King, straight suit with Jacks and Jokers wild, please,” she shook her head at the proffered decks and pointed to another.

“Looking to play fast and ruthless, I see,” the merchant chuckled. “Alright, little lady, let’s build it.”

Nick watched as Jules and Nat pulled thirty cards from her preferred pile, sorting through the face cards and arguing over strategy before Nat rounded out the deck with a couple of queens and small numbers. All told, the deck was smaller than the 54 card limit.

“Got a suit preference?” Jules asked. “I’m a spades man, myself.”

“Hearts,” Nat answered before Nick could reply. “Like the office sign.”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Nick winked at her.

Once the deck was completed to Nat’s high standards, the haggling began. It was kind of a thing of beauty really to watch Nat Wright work her magic. Nick thought she’d be a dangerous character when she got a bit older the way she played hardball. In the end, they walked away with the deck for 55 caps and Vault-tec lunchbox, which Nat pulled out of her little knapsack, and added to Nick’s bottle caps before making the trade with Jules. She reassured Nick later that the loss of the lunchbox was no loss at all. She had a grand collection thanks to Nick and Nora’s adventures in the commonwealth and as such, she had duplicates to spare.

“You drive a hard bargain little lady,” Jules shook her hand after the trade, and handed her the cards. “Pleasure doing business with you again.”

“Same!” Nat nodded sharply before the business woman fell away in favor of the reporter’s kid sister routine. “Say, Jules. You know anybody around here that sells jewelry?”

Jules stroked his beard thoughtfully.

“Couple of folks, as a matter of fact,” he told her. “What are we lookin’ to trade for?”

“Rings,” Nat explained.

“Bit rarer to find,” he hummed and pointed in the direction of another set of stalls. “You might try Paloma’s place. She’s the short lady with the wild grey hair near the outer rim. She runs most of the old world trinket finds. Drives a hard bargain though, so gamble hard, sister.”

“Thanks a lot!” Nat said appreciatively, before grabbing Nick’s hand and dragging him in the direction Jules had pointed them in.

“Looks like we’ve gotta lead,” Nick said, impressed.

“Stick with me, Nick,” Nat crowed proudly, handing Nick his Caravan deck. “We’ll find whatcha want.”

The pair wound their way through the thick of the Diamond City crowds out in force now, until they found a colorful looking stall filled to the brim with enough baubles and jewelry on display to rival a Fallon’s counter back before the bombs. Necklaces and bracelets and big glittering show pieces of the variety Nick recalled seeing weighted around the necks of some of Jenny’s society friends on orchestra nights covered every surface and hung from mismatched hooks. Old world brooches and cufflinks in every size, shape and color imaginable were laid out in neat wooden boxes lined with scraps of cloth in a myriad of mismatched patterns. In the center of it all; an old velvet ring stand waited, the faded blue material hugging rows and rows of the little metal bands.

Nick’s heart skipped a beat in excitement. He’d been prepared to settle for whatever he could find, but now, he was determined to find a band worthy of his girl’s finger. A broad grin pulled at his lips a moment before Nat swatted him.

“What are you doing?” she hissed at him. “Put your game face back on.”

“Sorry,” Nick cleared his throat and sobered. He willed his expression back to the cool aloofness he’d been known for back in the day and stuck his hands in his pockets where a thick tin of bottlecaps lay waiting beside that damned blue star number Whitechapel Charlie had passed on to Nora, and the Caravan deck Nat had helped him purchase.

Much like with Jules’s stand, Nat eased up to the jewelry counter, poking at a few pieces before eyeing the rings with a hard and appraising look. As she did so, a tiny elderly woman peeked above the counter; as a word, wild didn’t do her hair justice.

Paloma was all of five feet tall on a good day, five and a half if you counted the curling mass of grey hair that stuck up like a proud lion’s mane from the top of her head. She wore robes of a sort in an amassment of different colors and patterns and the darkly tanned skin skin of her arms was leathery and coated in a variety of thick bangles that chimed when she moved. Her round little face was framed by an enormous pair of hot pink, bejeweled sunglasses, faded from top to bottom with a gold gradient glaze. Her big brown eyes stared at Nat innocently, but there was a sharpness to her grin that made Nick wary of her bargaining skills.

“See something you like, dearie?” the old lady cackled, her voice as wild as her hair, and ravaged by years spent huffing hard tobacco. “Or are we just browsing today?”

“We’re looking for a ring,” Nat told her simply. “What have you got?”

“Old Paloma’s got quite a collection,” the old bird preened. “Have a size in mind?”

Nick fished through his trouser pocket and and came out with a length of red string tied off in a neat little knot. He’d found it in the bottom of his top desk drawer, just as the old Nick said he would. He’d snuck the little red cord around her finger one night while she’d been sleeping in the hopes of finding something that fit better than her own someday.

“About this size,” Nick handed her the measurement. “And preferably in silver.”

The old woman adjusted her glasses and pulled out a little metal baton from beneath the counter, hashed with marks on one side and wider at one end than the other. She slipped the cord over the tip, rolling it down to one of the marks.

“Ah, lucky number six,” she said, nodding in approval. “Lucky indeed!”

Reaching beneath the tabletop of her stall, they heard her rummaging as metal clinked loudly against metal. After a moment, she returned to them, holding out an entire little tray of silver bands; all sized six.

“Old world treasures from across the lands,” she set them out, gesturing over the lot. “Take a look, young man, see what you see.”

Nick and Nat examined the rings carefully, pulling the little circles of metal out and placing them back again as they searched. Some were big costume pieces set with large glass jewels that flashed in the sun, others were real engagement bands, encrusted with little diamonds, sapphires and aquamarine. Pretty as they were, Nick didn’t think the gemstones looked much like something Nora would wear. He could already hear her laughing about how a diamond sitting proudly above the band would affect her pistol draw, and snag in the ruins of the city.

He wanted something simple. Something closer in match to his own; still hanging from that leather strap around her neck. 

He wanted something perfect.

Paloma’s little tray did have a few plain silver bands, and as he turned them in his fingers, frowning at the choice between polished and matte, rounded or flat, he came across one little band and stopped. At first glance, he’d thought it just a plain brushed silver ring, not unlike his own. As he turned it in his fingers, however, the other side revealed a little heart had been cut out from the metal, on either side of which a tiny arrow had been engraved and stained to a darker tone.

Nick wasn’t one to believe in signs, unless they matched his own. As he stared at the little ring, he thought his opinion might be changing on that sort of thing.

“This one,” he said quietly, admiring the way it flashed in the sunlight.

“Kind of plain,” Nat said with a disinterested tone. “How much?”

“Depends on what you’re trading,” Paloma smiled knowingly.

“What about caps?” Nick asked, immediately biting his tongue as Nat shot him a look.

“Dearie, does it look like I’m hurting for caps?” Paloma cackled. “Got enough hard cash to last me a lifetime. Give me something worthwhile, something rare, and we’ll deal.”

Nick put his hand in his trouser pocket, considering his options. He and Nora had caps to spare, but trade? There wasn’t a heck of lot he owned that he thought the lady behind the counter would want. Looking at her wares though, there was one thing on his person she might bite for.

“Would you take a watch?” he offered, pushing back the sleeve of his trench coat and revealing the gold band around his wrist.

“I might,” she hummed. “Rings are scarce treasures these days though...easy to melt down for other needs; a collector’s item if you will. Bid a bit higher and we might make a deal.”

“Bid higher?” Nick shook his head. “With what?”

Paloma took advantage of Nick’s befuddlement, pointing one long jeweled finger at his belt. 

“How ‘bout that little trinket?” she grinned wickedly, eyeing the brass shield clipped to his waist.

“My badge?” he frowned. 

“Ain’t seen the likes of those around,” Paloma nodded in approval. “Lotta lawmen out West’ll make good trade for something so unseen.”

Nick kicked himself for hesitating. It was a silly thing to want to hold onto; a silly thing when compared to Nora’s ring. Just a bit of brass, really...and yet?

It had once been an important piece of his old life; his old job. It was still something he foolishly clipped to the leather of his belt every morning; as if it still _meant_ something.

Nick’s fingers flexed as he reached for the badge. 

He could...he could give it up for this. His old life was nothing anymore, anyway; not in the face of everything he had in the here and now.

Nat’s hand covered his as he popped it free from his belt.

“I’ll play you for it,” she said quickly.

Nick blinked.

“What’s this then?” Paloma leaned across the counter, adjusting her glasses as she looked at Nat.

“Caravan,” Nat said, holding up her own deck and nodding towards a stack of cards piled near the old woman’s hand. “Your cards are out, so you accept a gamble for a trade, right?”

The old woman eyed Nat suspiciously. 

“Not a lot of newcomers know that rule,” Paloma studied her.

“The man with the cards told me about it,” Nat put on her biggest, silliest kid grin and pointed innocently over her shoulder to Jules’s stand in the distance. “He sold me a real neat starter deck and told me I could try to play against some of the traders for things if their deck was on the table.”

“That’s true,” Paloma settled back into an easy sort of banter, seemingly pleased with the words “starter deck”. “You’ve still got to make a wager young lady. A game of chance has stakes on both sides.”

“His watch and badge against the ring,” Nat thumbed in Nick’s direction.

“Hey now,” Nick frowned. “We lose this and we’re out the whole pot.”

“Trust me,” Nat winked at him, before turning back to Paloma. “We good?”

“Let’s play,” Paloma’s grin was wide enough to paint a small canvas.

Fourty-Five grueling minutes later; Nat lost to Paloma’s caravan. 

Nick was still shaking his head in disbelief as the old woman crowed her victory and he handed back the little silver ring, shortly thereafter joined by his watch and badge. Of all the times Nick had played cards against Nat, he’d never seen her run such shoddy hands. Even he, new to the game as he was, saw every mistake she’d made; the girl giving up several clear opportunities to one up her opponent’s stacks. If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought Nat was fooling with the old lady. Paloma played with a small deck and she’d only had four cards left before the game had completed in her victory.

“Don’t look so down, sonny,” the old lady cooed. “I’m here all week. With any luck, you can find something worth trading before we leave town.”

“One more hand,” Nat begged. “I bought two decks from that man today and I’d like to try the other out.”

“Two decks?” Paloma asked.

“So we could play together,” Nat pointed at Nick.

Paloma cackled again.

“You can change decks, too, if you want,” Nat offered innocently.

“I’ll stick with my own, thank you,” Paloma winked at her. “She might be slow to build, but she always lands a hard finish. We can play again, what’s the offer this time, kid?”

“One sec,” Nat held up a hand and turned to Nick. “Let me see your deck.”

“I got nothin’ to bet with, Nat,” he told her sadly. Screwed as they were, he couldn’t be mad at her enthusiasm. 

“How many caps ya got?” Nat dove for Nick’s pocket, rummaging around for his cards and tin. “Lemme see!”

“Hey now, hold your horses, kiddo,” Nick scolded as she turned the whole pocket inside out to get at the cards. The little blue star cap fell to the dirt and stayed there. “We’re gonna lose all our kit if you keep that up.”

Nick reached for the little bottle cap, retrieving it from where it landed and blowing the dust from it before moving to set it back in his pocket. The little gasp from Paloma’s withered lips wasn’t missed by neither himself, nor Nat.

“How bout this then?” Nat snatched the bottle cap from Nick’s fingers and held it so the old woman could view it better.

“Where did you get that..?” Paloma breathed.

“Off a bottle of soda,” Nat shrugged and lied.

The old woman’s mouth was practically watering now over the sight of that little cap. Nick wondered what made it worth all the fuss she was making.

“What do you want for it?” Paloma murmured, glancing back to Nat.

“The ring, watch and badge,” Nat flipped the little cap. “For this. Winner takes all.”

“Deal!” Paloma cackled. “Come on, come on! Let’s play, Dearie!”

As the old lady began shuffling her cards, Nick leaned down over Nat’s shoulder.

“We’re really in the breeze if we lose this one, Nat,” he whispered. “I’m tapped out for trade.”

“Trust me, Nick,” Nat winked. “We’ll get you what you need.”

Less than five minutes later, Nat decimated Paloma’s deck, hitting 26 across her caravans in a few short moves. It was the fastest game of cards Nick had ever seen played.

“Caravan!” Nat cried out. “I win! Yay!”

“Cut the crap, you little ringer,” Paloma laughed, despite her loss. “Ain’t no fresh blood plays a lightning deck like that.”

“Still won,” Nat handed the glowing blue cap back to Nick before reaching out for the other winnings the old woman had placed on a little red tray. “Pleasure doing business with you, ma’am.”

“Yeah, yeah, get going,” she swatted at them both. “Before you fleece anything else outta me. Word of advice though…”

She leaned across the counter and spoke quietly.

“Keep that cap outta sight,” Paloma warned. “Lotta people here would slit your throat to put one of those in their pockets.”

“You included?” Nick eyed her carefully.

“I’m getting too old to play games of murder,” she cackled. “It’s all about the luck of the draw for me now, Sonny! Not everyone’ll be as kind though. Not over something that rare. Keep it in mind.”

“Thanks for that,” Nick tipped his hat in her direction.

“Hope your lady likes her ring,” the old lady preened. “You need anything else, you come back and see old Paloma now, y’hear?”

“Pretty good, right?” Nat grinned as she handed their winnings over to Nick. She waited as he set the watch back to his wrist, before pocketing the ring and clipping the badge back onto his belt.

“I’d say that’s worth a lunch on the house,” Nick ruffled her hair. “Or several years worth of lunches, for that matter.”

“Soda included?” she poked him in the side.

“Soda included,” he beamed, offering her his hand as they made their way over to the small outdoor commissary. The little card shark took hold of it immediately, her face lighting up bright as could be. “Thanks for that, Nat.”

“I like you better with the badge on,” she confided. “Makes you look cool, y’know?”

Nick laughed at that. Cool might not be the word he’d use to describe it, but nevertheless, he was grateful it was still in his possession. It would have been a small price to pay for the little silver ring his fingers lovingly brushed against in the safety of his pocket. Even so, he was glad things had worked out like they did. The Boston Police Department was as much a relic as Nick was nowadays, but the badge was a reminder of everything he was; a way of looking backwards, and remembering now and then that his life had once been different.

When they got to the food stall, Nick fronted a small pile of caps while Nat picked them out a variety of festival treats, including two bottles of Sunset Sarsaparilla, which his young partner in crime whooped and celebrated all the way on their journey to one of the many benches laid out for patrons of the Caravan. 

“This stuff is the best!” Nat informed Nick as she took a big gulp from her own bottle.

Nick sniffed at the bottle before tasting his. 

“...it’s root beer,” he chuckled.

“What?” Nat cringed. “I thought it was soda.”

“It is,” Nick assured her. “Just a pre-war thing, I guess. Too bad the bombs did away with ice cream. Could have shown you what this stuff’s really made for, then.”

“You’re so weird, Nick,” she laughed, picking at their shared lunch. Reaching into her pocket, she slid his deck of cards across the table. “Oh! Almost forgot these!”

Nick put his hand over her own before she released them.

“You hold onto those for me,” he gave her a lop-sided grin. “Winning deck like that ought to stay in the hands of the master.”

“What’ll you play with?” she asked frowning. 

“You got two decks now, don’t ya?” he nodded at her little knapsack. “Bring ‘em both with ya to the office next time and we’ll play. Not much good for me to have one anyway without you across the table.”

That answer seemed to satisfy Nat and she happily set the decks aside as they ate.

“Say,” Nick eyed her suspiciously. “If I hadn’t had that weird cap in my pocket, what were you planning on using for collateral back there? I was tapped out.”

“This,” Nat pulled a small leather case from her bag and handed it to Nick. Inside, he found a small gold-plated spyglass. “It was my dad’s.”

“Much as I appreciate the gesture,” Nick carefully handed it back to her. “That’s something you ought to hold onto. Can’t imagine something rare like that’s worth losing.”

“I wouldn’t have lost it,” Nat winked at him confidently. “I only played that first hand to see what cards were in her deck. It was too small to be a standard. Your deck’s an easy win against it.”

“Such cheek,” he laughed. “Remind me never to play the odds against you, Nat. You’re too sharp for me.”

“Said you could trust me,” she reminded him, finishing off her root beer.

“Never should have doubted ya,” he agreed. “Got anything else you wanna do around here?”

Nat looked at him oddly for a moment; glancing around.

“Sure, but,” she furrowed her brows at him. “Are you sure you don’t wanna go and find Nora?”

“I’ll do just that tonight,” he smiled, wistfully; turning the little silver ring over in his pocket. “We’ve got a date at seven.”

A lot of things would be changing for him tonight and for once, he was glad to wait it out. The anticipation was building every moment and, perhaps even more so than regaining his memories, he was getting a chance to try his hand at another thing he’d thought he’d missed out on.

It wasn’t every day a guy got married. Even if the girl was already technically his wife.

He set the remainder of his root beer in front of Nat and watched her eyes light up. 

“Gotta lotta hours to burn till then, though,” he noted playfully. “Bet we could get up to a lotta trouble if we stick together.”

“There’s a trader on the other side of the way that takes a gamble,” Nat informed him excitedly. “He brings kittens with him every year.”

“Well, finish your drink, kid,” Nick leaned back in approval. “And let’s take they guy for everything he’s got.”

Nick spent the afternoon wandering the marketplace with Nat, watching her make trades over trinkets and cards, and offering her his hand to hold between stalls. As they caught up with Piper around five, Nat proudly showing off her new black kitten, and regaling the reporter with the terrifying four minute battle of decks that won the little creature, Nick turned the piece of silver over in his pocket and grinned.

Watching Nat, he decided that fatherhood might not be such a bad gig if he ever got a chance at it. He wondered what Nora might say if he brought it up with her sometime. He hoped she might be game to play the numbers on that wheel with him in the future.

Piper invited Nick to join them when Nat agreed to help her older sister secure a bargain the next stall section over, and as Nat reached for his hand, Nick wrapped her fingers in his own without a thought. His life certainly had changed over the last 200 years. He had a family of friends, his own office with a bright pink neon sign out front in a great little town full of lights and a rose garden; and he had a wife. One that truly loved him. One that sent him over the moon. One that he was going to marry again later that evening in a bid to play their happily ever after and see if all the pieces fit.

He’d spent his whole life thinking this kinda thing would always be just a fantasy for him. It was hard to believe some days that this was his reality now; with a girl and a life and place he could truly call his own.

It was some kind of beautiful dream, and now that he got to thinking about it...it wouldn’t be _so_ bad if, sometime in the future, a little Valentine got added into their mix.

Maybe…

Maybe even _two_.


	36. Silver Over Platinum

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick one! Been reading your comments since the last chapter and starting the coffee pot after work just to keep going. I really appreciate them! Hope you enjoy!

It wasn’t that she _missed_ him.

From her place on the little bench not far from the city gates, Nora was _looking_ right at _him_. 

If she yelled loud enough, he might even hear her from this distance.

So, it _wasn’t_ that she missed him.

It was just that, as she watched him walk the marketplace with Nat and Piper, Nora realized how many hours had passed since she’d last been in his company and how many hours were left before seven rolled around at last. She didn’t doubt he’d be over the moon if she ran over to him now, but much as her heart ached to do just that, there was an odd little pleasure in waiting for him tonight. He was up to something. She was sure of it.

The anticipation of what it could be made her giddy; a euphoric kind of torture as the minutes ticked slowly by.

Not that it made the longing she constantly felt for him any better. Nick liked to describe it as the gravity between them; some kind of force that was constantly pulling them closer, and Nora thought that was a pretty fitting description. She was addicted to him, that’s all there was to it. Addicted to his personality, addicted to his smile, addicted to his voice, and his hands and his habits; addicted to the small comfort of just standing beside him. 

All or nothing; this was love.

And with him, she’d always been in deep.

Whatever he had planned for the evening, she knew he’d be meeting up with her again soon; and, in the meantime, she was content to sit on a bench in front of Diamond City and watch her husband from a distance. Sitting where she was, it reminded her of how far they’d come over the years together. She thought about the last time she’d been sitting on this bench, watching him from a distance, and marveled at how different things were now. When she’d first woken in the Commonwealth all those years ago, she never would have dreamed her life would lead to anything like this. She had a husband and a life and a place she could call her own, with enough friends to form a family and then some. Things she never thought she’d ever know or have in her world again.

It was a beautiful kind of reality and, for all the bullets she seemed to attract over the years, she was really glad she’d managed to survive long enough to live this life. 

Not that she was keeping an eye on her husband mind you; he just happened to be where she happened to be right now. After she’d taken care of things at the office, made her visits for the day, and traded for a few items, like a boatload of coffee, in the Caravan marketplace; she’d begun the evening hours in the solace of that quiet bench, just watching the world go by.

She had a lot to think about at the moment.

Fishing a cigarette out of her jeans pocket, Nora slid the smoke between her lips and flicked open her silver-plated lighter, only to close it back up again with a soft curse.

She _really_ wanted a cigarette right now.

More the pity.

Leaning back into the bench, she immediately regretted the action, wincing as she pulled her arm free from where she’d tried to rest it. She rearranged herself a bit more carefully the second time, rubbing absently at the clean white bandage wrapped around her left bicep as she tucked the cigarette back into her pocket, next to the little glass vial full of blue liquid Doctor Sun had handed her.

The terse man had assured her the bruise wouldn’t last long, but as the small dose of Med-X he’d applied earlier in the morning had begun to wear off, the damn thing tingled something fierce whenever she bumped the small wound. As scars went, it would hardly be her most striking, but, all things considered, it _would_ end up as one of her most ironic.

 _Someday_ , she knew she’d probably laugh about it, but right now?

Right now it left her with more questions than answers.

In the distance, she could she her husband laughing over something Nat had told him. It was good to see him this relaxed and happy in his own skin, and that thought alone returned a smile to her face. Nora wanted to remember him like this; unguarded and serene. Radiant.

She wondered if he’d wear that expression for her later.

She wondered what he’d say once he knew.

Sighing heavily, Nora pulled her knees up to her chest and ran a ragged hand through her hair. 

She wasn’t sure what he’d think of _anything_ at the moment. Hell, she wasn’t sure what _she_ was thinking at the moment. 

She was trying desperately _not_ to think at the moment.

Nora was used to life throwing her curve balls by now; had to be after 200 years spent in a freezer and everything that came afterwards; but this? This was…

She wasn’t sure what _this_ was.

 _Irony_ , perhaps.

Resting her chin on her arms, Nora’s gaze returned to following her husband’s movements through the market crowd.

All things considered, she felt oddly calm about the whole situation. She supposed she should feel guilty, or angry, or...or sad maybe; but she felt none of these things. She’d been shocked of course; who wouldn’t be, then confused...and after that? Maybe just a _little_ excited.

Maybe a whole _lot_ excited.

Things were _different_ now though. _She_ was different now, and so was Nick; and these things had to be considered, which is why Doctor Sun handed her that little glass vial full of blue liquid.

She’d toyed with the little flask in her pocket throughout the hours since, weighing the arguments for both sides in her head, and preparing for the Court’s sentencing in the matter. In a moment of panic, she’d almost swallowed it down with her lunch; fates be damned. It would be a small act of defiance against the cast dice, one that she could make alone and no one would ever be the wiser, save for herself and Doctor Sun. Life could go on as it was; nothing would change.

That thought had been what stopped her. Nothing would change; no gamble, no risk.

Nora didn’t like that thought. Life was always changing in the Commonwealth, it’s just how things went; and she wasn’t shy about playing the numbers, even when she wasn’t sure if fate was in her favor.

Even if she wasn’t sure what Nick would say.

One thing was for certain though: She could survive this. If there was one thing she’d become good at over the years; it was surviving.

She’d lay her case out for him. Put all her cards and evidence on the table, and hope he’d come around to the idea; and if not? If not…

She still had that little glass vial.

Until then, the jury was out, and she still had a couple of hours to sit through until they came together again. For now; she’d wait for him, and be content to watch him from a distance.

“Two years on, and you’re still sittin’ here on this bench,” a voice drawled from behind her; shaking her from her reverie. 

She’d forgotten how _honeyed_ that golden voice was in the interim summers since she’d last heard it. For all she’d been known as Charmer with the Railroad, that man’s voice was the very definition of the word. She’d bet the sun would rise for him in the evenings, if he asked it sweetly enough.

“Maybe I just like the bench,” she returned, the smoke in her voice a low drift.

“Girl like you?” he chuckled, sliding into the seat beside her with a panther’s grace. “Can’t imagine you’d like anythin’ that nails your feet to the floor for long.”

He was just as she remembered him. Tall, and tan, and bleeding confidence from a wound that would never close. Much as she’d tried to hate him over the years, he’d filled her with a little of that confidence during their week-long talks two years back; had given her the push she’d needed and eventually followed when Nick was two hours late for a date in the guise of friendly drinks, and she’d walked the wine to his place rather than letting their chance go by without a fight.

Nothing would have changed otherwise; so she’d taken his wager, and played her cards.

She owed that part of her life to this man and, persistent as he may be, she couldn’t hate him for that.

“You might be surprised,” Nora said breezily. “Road treating you well, Six?”

“As well as it ever has,” he said, amusement in his voice. “Might treat me a spell better if’n I wasn’t spendin’ my nights dreamin’ ‘bout this gal I met once. How ‘bout you, Darlin’?

“Just living the quiet life,” her voice was sonorous and calm as she spoke; wistful.

“You got a funny definition a quiet,” Six grinned at her, even as she refused to look his way. “Heard tell, an angel with white wings went to _war_ recently. Nearly got herself killed fightin’ ten thousand robots and a monster in a metal suit.”

“Sounds like quite the story,” she shook her head, the corners of her lips twitching. “Hope someone made a good trade out of it.”

“Paid a handsome price to hear it start to finish,” he agreed. “Worth every cap for that tale.”

“You could have just asked,” she said wryly.

“Doubt you’d tell me the version what has you dancin’ on the rooftops with that metal man, strappin’ explosives to his back with nothin’ but a bit a glue,” he laughed; full and deep.

“That part’s true,” she conceded with a little cringe.

He leaned closer.

“Comon’, Honey. You can’t tell me y’ain’t bored to tears when you’re throwin’ yerself into the fray like that,” his voice teasing, despite the assurance behind it. “Gal like you should be out there with a gun on your hip and danger at all sides.”

“I get enough of that around town, I assure you,” she laughed; an honest sound. “Even so...it’s good to be retired.”

“So you say, and yet, you’re still catchin’ bullets with that sweet skin a yours,” he murmured, the knuckles of his metal hand brushing against the bandage on her arm.

“Don’t,” she warned him.

“‘Fraid you’ll like it?” he murmured, flashing the white of his teeth. Beneath the flirtatious nature of it all, there was something like worry in his eyes. Something like real concern. “That hurt?”

“Just tingles right now,” she sighed, stretching her legs back down to the ground and leaning back; careful this time of her arm. “This...it wasn’t a bullet. Doc was just looking for something this morning. He, uh...he didn’t find it.”

“Bit a shrapnel?” Six asked quietly, a fingertip gently tracing a pack of fine silvery scars that seemed to line the entirety of her left arm. 

“I wish,” she chuckled, a playful smirk pulling at her lips. “Had quite a bit of that in this arm from the last battle...docs at the camp were a little too thorough when they started pulling the pieces out. Took something they shouldn’t have.”

She snorted in a pained sort of amusement.

“God...it _is_ really funny, if you think about it that way.”

Six didn’t laugh with her, though.

“So you say,” his voice dipped to a sonorous rumble. “But then why do I get the notion you’re one wrong word a side of cryin’?”

“I’m not, I just..,” Nora turned her head sharply to look at him, realizing her mistake a moment too late. 

His mismatched eyes were watching her, the warmth in his brown one so different than the mirth it usually held, that for one small moment; it felt like she was looking at Nate. Her late husband had been quite a bit like Six, back before the bombs; playful to a fault, but caring. He’d looked at her the same way once, and the first tears fell before she could even think to turn away. 

“Just got some news today,” she admitted with a quiet laugh, wiping at her cheeks with the back of her hand. 

“Somethin’ bad?” he whispered. His metal hand crossed the back of the bench between them, fingers stroking gently along the back of her neck and through her hair.

“It..,” she cringed, feeling that ache in her chest, and that pull of gravity for the man that wasn’t sitting beside her right now. “It shouldn’t be.” 

As her cheeks dried in the setting sun, Nora told Six everything. From marrying Nick, to almost losing him in the street that morning when X6-88 caught them off-guard, to waking up from a chem overdose and finding her husband’s eye color had changed while she’d been sleeping, among other things. She told him of the war she’d fought and the battle she’d won; the people she’d lost and the ones that survived. She told him about the injuries she’d wracked up and the hours the field doctors had spent digging metal out of her arm from the explosives Ayo had been tossing her way up on that roof. 

She told him about the month of peace she’d known after, and the blissful life she’d finally come to know. She told him about visiting Doctor Sun every week since the war; doing follow up checks with him to appease Doc Carrington of the Railroad who made the visits with Diamond City’s resident physician a condition of her leaving to return home so soon after the battle.

She told him about her test results that morning, and the reason she’d had Doctor Sun cut open her arm. 

She told him about the little object Doctor Sun couldn’t find when he did, because the field doctors had already removed it; mistaking it for a piece of shrapnel.

She told him about meeting Nick later and not knowing what to say. She told him about the little glass vial in her pocket, filled with blue liquid; and that it was an option if what he had to say, was ‘no’.

She told him she was afraid the man she loved might not love what she’d have to talk about tonight, and, silly as it was, there was still some part of her that was afraid he might walk out on her for this.

“You and I both know there ain’t a lick a truth in _that_ bit a worry. That’s just your mind runnin’ wild like minds have a want to do when things go sideways,” Six teased under a meaningful look. “Can’t say that ain’t a whole mess of surprise you walked into, but I seen the pair of you in that bar down in Goodneighbor.”

He shook his head and laughed, remembering his own thoughts at seeing her in that getup, let alone the look on the man’s face that was with her.

“Much as I hate to admit defeat, you won our little wager fair and square,” he sighed melodramatically, giving her hair a playful tug. “Any man what looks at a gal like that is a lost cause to the rest a’the world. That heart’s got your name carved so deep in it, you can read the letters clear as day right through through his skin.”

He brushed the edge of her jaw tenderly, the metal of his hand cool against the warmth of the August evening.

“If I had to lose you to another fella,” he breathed. “Wouldn’t have stood for seein’ you with anythin’ less. Been up and down this burnt up world...never met the likes of you before. Ain’t met anyone come close since. Coulda made one helluva pair out there, you and me.”

Nora shook her head and smiled wearily.

“I did appreciate the offer, Six,” she said softly. “But he’s had my heart in his pocket since we met.”

“So you say,” Six smiled at her; a bright and wistful sort of thing. “He ever forgets it’s there though...you know you always got a place on the road next to me.”

“Sweet talker,” she smirked.

“Darlin’ I ain’t even got started yet,” he laughed, urging her off the bench with a gentle shove. “You best get on now before I forget our little bet and make off with ya.”

Nora chuckled as she got to her feet, and the smile that she gave him then was brilliant. Brilliant enough, Six seriously considered following up on the words he’d just given her.

“You’re a good man, Six,” Nora beamed; the early evening breeze taking hold of her hair. “You take care of yourself out there.”

As she turned to head back into the City, she’d gone all of five steps from him before Six was on his feet. With a sudden desperation, he took hold of her bad arm without thinking, eliciting a little yelp of pain as his metal fingers brushed the wound on the underside of her bicep. The Courier was halfway through an abashed apology, wanting only to wish her good luck on her endeavors that evening, when the sharp sting of a pistol barrel being shoved under his ribs from behind silenced him.

“Don’t know how things work out West,” Nick growled from behind Six’s shoulder. “But you’ve gotta ‘bout a second to get your goddamned hands off my _wife_ before we see how well you take a bullet.”

For a moment, the world went quiet and Six eased his fingers away from Nora’s arm, raising his hands up at his sides.

“Nick..,” Nora said softly, trying to find the words that would calm the utter rage and worry his grey storms were carrying right now.

“You alright, Doll?” he murmured, his eyes flickering to her from around the tall man, even as he kept watch for the slightest movement under his gun.

“I’m fine,” she assured him. “Nick, this is my _friend_ , Six. Six, this is my husband...who is being very rude at the moment.”

“Pleasure’s all mine,” Six jested. “I’m sure.”

Nick blinked in confusion, before lowering his gun in embarrassment. When he’d caught sight of Nora walking away from that bench with tear tracks dried on her cheeks, and then the man chasing after her, the other Nick’s warning had him running through the crowd to reach her. His world went red when that metal hand had caught hold of her arm and she’d cried out.

He wouldn’t have thought twice about pulling that trigger if he hadn’t let go.

“S-sorry,” he swallowed hard, shelving his pistol back under his arm; abashed. “I thought…”

“Ain’t no harm done,” Six turned, holding out a hand to his rival. Nora’s husband might not be a large man, but he had brass to pull a pistol like that, and Six respected him for it. “Ain’t the first time I found myself at the wrong end of a shooter.”

“Even so,” Nick took his hand, shaking it firmly. “It was my mistake.”

“Your lady and I were just keepin’ company while she waited on ya,” Six threw him a wink and a grin. “Though I gotta say, when I said you should grow a heart for her, didn’t know she’d take me so literal like.”

Nora laughed warmly at that, though Nick had no idea what the man was talking about.

“Anyhow, I’ll leave ya to it,” he nodded. “You got yourself one helluva gal there, mister. You take care with her, y’hear?”

“Don’t need to tell me that,” Nick shook his head, the corners of his lips tugging towards the sky. “It was nice meetin’ you, Six.”

“Likewise,” the Courier drawled and watched them go.

The detective tipped his hat at the tall man before wrapping an arm around his wife’s waist and walking with her the rest of the way to the gates. The look that passed between them in that moment they connected was unmistakeable.

It was love.

From out of the crowd, a rusted old eyebot flew straight to Six’s shoulder, beeping at him in alarm. The little turret gun it held frantically moving as it looked between the Courier and the departing couple.

“I appreciate the concern, Edi-ee,” Six chuckled. “But I’m right as rain. Just a misunderstandin’ between folks is all.”

ED-E gave a sharp whistle.

“No, I _don’t_ want you to go _shoot_ him,” Six waved the little bot off in amusement. It beeped again, in protest. “I don’t care if you could do it all _covert_ like. We ain’t shootin’ _nobody_ today.”

ED-E let out a little whining pitch and it’s turret returned to it’s resting position. The little eyebot was nothing if not loyal.

Six kept an eye on the couple until the disappeared from view behind the grand gates of the Great Green Jewel’s entryway. The evening breeze had toyed with Nora’s dark locks the whole way, pulling at the strands with teasing, gentle fingers as she walked.

It was a silly thing, to be jealous of that breeze, but Six was jealous of it all the same.

He’d walked a long and lonely road over the years, running packages for whoever needed them run. He knew the Mojave like the back of his old metal hand, and had taken more bullets for his efforts than some men had days to their lives. When he’d taken that bullet to his head back in the day, when he’d dug his own grave and stared down the barrel of Benny’s polished gun, Six never expected he’d have a life of his own to live again, much less one that led him to saving New Vegas, and securing him a hero’s welcome anytime he set foot in the territories back home.

He’d never given much thought to doing good for others until that night he thought his life had come to an end, and in the years afterwards, he’d tried his best not to waste the second chance he’d been given to leave the world a little better than he’d found it. No man’s life should end in a lonely grave he’d had to dig for himself, not if he could help it.

When he’d managed to stop the feud between the Crimson Caravan and Happy Trails, ending the bloodshed under the guise of wanting to forge new paths of trade to the East, he’d only expected to ride with the company long enough to get them established. To prove working together would bring in more caps than killing each other ever could.

That run two years back was meant to be his last, and as interesting as it’d been walking the world, he’d been restless to find something different than the endless days and nights under unfamiliar skies. He’d walked the grounds when they’d hit Diamond City, thinking about how long it’d take them to forge onto the ruins of Detroit and then Chicago before heading back home again, when Jules told him a tale about the Angel with White Wings; a woman from another time that had crawled out of the ground and saved the whole of the Commonwealth from Brotherhood and Mad Scientists alike. 

Six had laughed at the tale, but as the hours went on and the market swelled with folks from the City, he heard more traded stories of the Lady of the Commonwealth; each one more outrageous than the last. The Courier thought she must be some sort of beast to raise the kind of hell people were claiming she’d caused, all in the name of saving the Commonwealth. He thought she’d be a giant, like him; scarred and hard and dangerous.

He thought she might be someone he could relate to.

When he’d found her sitting on that bench though, she was just a little scrap of a woman, with hair dark as sin, and wings drawn in paint on the back of her shirt. He’d been amused at the idea of such a fearsome creature being little bigger than a kitten, pretty as she might have been. He didn’t think she looked the type to go around saving the world, even with the scars that stuck out on her pale, freckled skin the closer he drew near to her. 

The pistol on her hip had seen wear though, and the sharp look in those blue eyes as she surveyed the marketplace said she knew her business. He’d watched her for an hour or more, just taking her in, and the longer he’d observed her, the more he decided he needed to talk with her.

It wasn’t everyday a man got to meet an angel, after all.

It wasn’t until he was standing behind her that he realized what she’d been staring at this whole time. A man, made up like one of those old comic book characters was stalking through the crowd with a little girl at his side. A man, who on closer look, wasn’t really a man at all; not with that torn pearl-white skin and the gears hanging out.

At first, Six had thought she might have been wary of the man, watching him for a move or a signal that might send her running after him, gun drawn. But there was a look in her eye as she followed him.

A look so soft, he was sure it was love.

Six had taken amusement at that thought. That old bot had seen better days and there was just something funny about the great heroine of the Commonwealth pining over a beat up tin man. He’d only meant to tease her about it, see how riled up he could get her, and what kind of conversation might follow. He wanted to know what sort of woman she was and how she’d react when he called her out on her heart’s folly.

He’d expected her to deny it.

She’d done everything, but.

By the time she’d walked away from him, leaving Six on that bench with nothing more than the lingering smoke of her cigarette and the smooth ghost of her voice as she’d told him off, neat as you please, he was already smitten.

She was fire and ice all in one; burning bright under that cool exterior, and ready for a fight if he should give her one.

So he did.

Six had made himself her shadow throughout the week, walking in her heels from sun up until late evening, poking at her defenses before he’d found a big enough hole in her armor over a glass of terrible bourbon in the local bar. They’d swapped war stories and strategy; life tales and words of caution; and before the night was out, Six had charmed his way into a friendship of sorts with her, an easy sort of companionship based on similar adventures and a pair of Pip-Boys.

The more she spoke to him, the more he wanted of her, however, and as the end of the week neared, his jibes became a little less playful, and his offers to take her away from the City, a little more real. They’d walked up and down the ruins of Boston together on that last day, and when he’d watched her pull that little pistol of hers when a pack of ferals stumbled across their path, he’d never wanted anything so bad in his life. 

Try as he might, though, she wouldn’t budge. That old scrap heap of a bot had something tied tight to her heart, and Six didn’t have the means to cut her loose, much as he wanted to. When she’d turned him down that last time on her doorstep, something had snapped in him; something bold and reckless and desperate to convey the need she inspired in him. The need he wanted to inspire in her. In the time afterwards, he kicked himself for touching her as he had. He’d never forced himself on a girl before and he felt lower than low for it as he’d walked back to his tent that night. 

Even so, the guilt had been worth it for that one _kiss_.

She’d been fire in his arms and if she’d let him, he’d have willingly burned.

The ghost of her sweet taste still haunted him two years on and he chased his cigarettes with a dash of sarsaparilla in his whiskey trying to recapture the moment. When he left her with that bottle cap, he had every intention of making good on his word. When he found her again, alone and waiting on that bench, he’d planned to come prepared the next time; planned to carry her off if need be. He wanted that fire for his own, and Six had spent his time on the road devising a new strategy for the next time they’d meet.

One year away though had turned into two on account of some shoddy business with his old namesake in the Divide. Much as Six had wanted to return to Diamond City, he’d forgone the Caravan ride to deal with Ulysses; and though he was glad he’d been able to save the man’s life, Six couldn’t help but wonder if it’d cost him his wager with the Angel he’d been chasing in his dreams.

And he _had_ been chasing her, make no mistake about that.

He’d felt like a lifetime had passed since he’d seen her last as his group made port in the little town of Goodneighbor for a couple of nights, and he’d gone down with the other Caravan guards to the underground dive bar to wash some of the jitters out of his nerves in expectation of their next stop.

As he’d sat under the shadows of the colored club lights, he watched the glittering citizens of the free town as they mingled among his own. He’d had an odd sense of deja vu when he’d caught sight of the man in the trench coat that night when he’d stumbled across the room towards the town’s Mayor. There was something familiar about the man; though Six was certain he’d never seen the guy in his life.

He’d been nursing the same glass of whiskey for an hour, and was considering of turning in before he did something crazy like walking to Diamond City in the dark; when she walked in.

He’d have recognized his angel anywhere, even after two years and hidden behind those sleek glasses; he knew those eyes of hers. He saw them every time he closed his own.

Six was on his feet and ready to walk over to her when she stopped by the man in the trench coat and the rest of the world went away. Crowded as the club was; there was no one else but an angel and that man in the trench coat anymore. Not between them, anyway. The looks they threw each other were unmistakable.

Six knew what love looked like, even as he watched from a distance.

He’d spent the rest of that night in the shadows, memorizing her every move as he tried to convince himself otherwise. He’d even thought about joining her for a short while, wondering what she’d do if he just walked up to her now; what she’d say. Six didn’t miss when the man in the trench coat opened his coat just enough to let the handle of his piece show, nor did he miss the arm he wrapped protectively around his angel’s shoulders; the smile on his face not reaching his eyes as he scanned the room around them. When she’d leaned into the crook of the man’s neck and he’d pressed a soft kiss to her forehead; Six knew he’d lost the wager.

He wasn’t sure how that old bot had grown a heart alongside his new head of hair, but he’d had her in his pocket from the get go, and Six wasn’t going to be a sore loser. He’d left the cap and walked back to his tent, and dreamed she’d joined him on the road two years back. Dreamed she’d taken up a life at his side. Dreamed he’d been the one to put her to the kind of trouble she found herself in now.

He’d have to find a new dream come tomorrow. 

She had another man’s silver hanging around her neck, and Six’s life had been cast in _platinum_. 

Tapping ED-E on it’s side, Six grinned broadly.

“Comon’ Edi,” he drawled. “Let’s see if we can’t rustle up a game of Caravan with old Paloma. I feel like playin’ the numbers tonight.”

ED-E beeped happily at his side and took off through the crowd in the direction of the old woman’s stall. Six glanced back towards the gates of Diamond City only once, and then went on his way.

They’d have made one hell of a pair on the road together; that angel of the Commonwealth and Six.

Damn shame someone else had found her when she’d fallen from the Heavens before he did. 

Girl like that might really like a place like New Vegas. 

Girl like that might even manage to nail his feet down somewhere he could call home, someday.

Damn shame, really.

Damn shame.


End file.
